i\\lUS  AS  il  IS 


An 


intimate  account  of 

its  home  life, 

ind  its  places  of  interest. 


its  peo| 


By  Katharink  de  Forest 


3  1822  00850  418E 


LIBRARY 


^ 


UNIVERSITY  OP 
CALIFO«NIA 

SAN  DIEGO 


J 


CI14 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA    SAN  DIEGO 


3  1822  00850  4185 


V 


Ouo-ff-^        ^ 


^fij 


Phone:  CI  4-0828  ^ 


PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 


PARIS  AS  IT  IS 


AN  INTIMATE  ACCOUNT  OF 
ITS  PEOPLE,  ITS  HOME  LIFE, 
AND  ITS  PLACES  OF  INTEREST 


BY 

KATHARINE  DE  FOREST 

miudtcated 


NEW  YORK 
DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  CO. 

1900 


Copyright,  1900,  by 

DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  Co. 


Preface, 


The  writer  of  this  book  is  an  American  who 
exiled  herself  from  her  country,  not  by  in- 
tention; for  chance  sent  her  to  Paris  and 
fetters  of  business  kept  her  there.  Her  ex- 
patriation found  comfort,  however,  in  an  un- 
usual privilege  of  contact  with  many  phases 
of  French  life;  which,  beholding  with  two 
pairs  of  eyes,  she  has  sought  to  translate  into 
philosophy.  For,  indeed,  the  Old  World  is 
in  many  respects  terra  incognita  to  the  New. 
The  tourist  knits  his  brows  in  passing  like  a 
pilgrim  under  the  dull  eyes  of  the  Sphinx. 
Here,  for  instance,  is  a  country  which  for 
some  hundreds  of  years  has  kept  a  certain 
number  of  its  citizens  set  apart,  starred, 
medalled  and  uniformed  as  immortals — how 
shall  that  be  interpreted  at  the  beginning  of 
the  twentieth  century?  Old  art  and  literature, 
old  temples  and  monuments,  old  customs  and 
traditions,  have  these  a  message  to  neolog- 
ists?     Do  they  rest  on  eternal  principles  and 


vl  PllKFACE. 

speak  of  unchanging  truths?  This  book  is 
perhaps  less  a  guide-book  than  a  dream- 
book.  Certainly  it  was  written,  not  so  much 
to  give  information,  as  to  interpret  the  genius 
of  Paris.  Nevertheless  its  facts  are  from  in- 
side, reliable  and  in  large  part  inaccessible 
sources.  Thanks  are  due  in  particular  to  M. 
Andre  Saglio.  of  the  Beaux  Arts,  for  many 
suggestive  facts,  especially  in  regard  to  the 
French  movement  in  art. 


Contents. 


PART    I.— THE    LIFE    AND    PEOPLE. 

The  Charm  of  Paris 3 

The  Academie   Fran^aise  and  the  Other 

Academies 14 

The  Comedie  Fran^aise 35 

French  Homes 55 

The  Latix  Quarter 72 

The  Men  of  Letters 83 

The  Restaurants 109 

The  Great  Shops 128 

PART   IL— THE    RULERS    OF    PARIS. 

The  Chamber  of  Deputies 141 

The  Elysee 158 

In  the  Ministries 173 

PART    III.— THE   ART    LIFE    AND    ITS 
INSTITUTIONS. 

The  Museum  of  Clunv 191 

The  Little  Museums 205 

Les  Invalides 214 

The  Mode 219 

The  Studios 229 

Notre  Dame 261 

The  Commerce  of  Art  in  Paris     ....  267 


List  of  Ilhcstrations . 

A  General  View  of  Paris  from  the 

T  r~  ,-,  ■  FACING 

Louvre,  Frontispiece.  page 

Sunday  on  the  Bois  du  Boulogne      ...  8 

Jules  Claretie  in  His  Lihrary iS 

Ready  for  School 26 

Foyer  of  the  Theatre  Fran(,aise      ...  38 

The  Theatre  Fran(;aise 38 

mounet-sully  in  his  library 44 

Sarah  Bernhardt 48 

The  Elder  Coquelin 52 

Cozy  Corner  in  a  French  Ho.me    ....  64 

A  French  Home 64 

A  Family  Breakfast 68 

On  the  Street 68 

The  Moulin  Rouge 76 

Zola  in  His  Study 86 

"Gyp" 94 

Edmond  Rost.\nd  in  His  Library    ....  98 

Pierre  Loti 104 

Restaurant  Ledoyen 114 

Salon  in  the  Cafe  de  Paris 114 

A  Tramping  Party  of  Painters 120 

The  Magazin  du  Printemps 130 

The  Bon  Marche 130 

Hall  of  Cha.mher  of  Deputies 152 


X  J.I  ST  OF  JJJ.I'Srh'ATJONS. 

FACING 
PAGK 

Decoration  Over  the  Door  of  the  Elysee  i68 

The  President's  Library  at  the  Elysee  .  168 

Under  the  Eiffel  Tower 178 

Place  du  Chatelet,  Victory  Fountain  178 

First  Communicants 1S4 

Coming  Out  from   Mass  at   St.  Germain 

DES  Pres 184 

Room  of  Francis  I.,  Cluny  Museum  .    .    .  198 

The  Garden  of  Cluny 198 

In  the  Garden  of  the  Tuileries   ....  208 

The  Tuileries  Gardens,  Rue  de  Rivoli  Side  208 
Napoleon's  Tomb  at  the  Hotel  des  Inva- 

lides 216 

The  Flower  Market 222 

In  a  Fiacre 222 

Massenet  at  Home 232 

Bonnat's  Studio 242 

Besnard  in  His  Studio 242 

Gallery  of  Apollo  at  the  Louvre  .  .  .  252 
General   View  of   the  Louvre  from  the 

River 252 

The  Arc  de  Triomphe 260 

Bridge  of  Notre  Dame 260 

One  of  the  Gargoyles  on  Notre  Dame    .  264 

Entrance  to  Notre  Dame 264 

The  Lwalides 276 


PART    I. 
THE  LIFE  AND  PEOPLE. 

ERRATUM. 

The  copyright  of  the  pictures  reproduced 
from  the  photographic  series  "Nos  Contem- 
porains  chez  Eux "  should  be  credited  to 
Messrs.  Braun,  Clement  &  Cie. 


The  Charm  of  Paris. 

What  is  the  secret  of  this  enigmatic  charm 
of  Paris  which,  sooner  or  later,  takes  posses- 
sion of  everyone?  What  is  it  about  Paris  which 
seizes  people,  envelops  them,  holds  them,  and 
often  keeps  them  forever,  even  those  who  pro- 
fess to  have  the  greatest  lack  of  sympathy  for 
the  French?  "Every  man  has  two  countries," 
said  an  old  writer  of  the  last  century,  "his 
own,  and  then  France."  And  this  seems  to 
hold  true  even  now  of  the  capital.  What  is  the 
key  to  this  mysterious  seduction?  This  is 
something  which  has  intrigued  and  fascinated 
me  from  the  time  I  first  began  to  know  the 
French  capital.  And  now  I  have  discovered 
that  when  you  have  solved  this  enigma  you 
have  got  at  one  of  the  best  means  for  under- 
standing the  French  people. 

For  a  long  time  it  was  instinctive  to  look  to 
the  natural  beauty  of  Paris  as  one  of  the  princi- 
pal sources  of  her  charm,  for  she  is  singularly 
happy  in  her  site;  as  Montaigne  put  it  so  pic- 
turesquely, "£//('  est  grandc  en  fclicitc  dc  son 
assicttc.'"  All  her  natural  features  combine 
to  give  varied  artistic  eiifects,  especially  the 
Seine,  which  traverses  the  city  with  the  curve 
3 


4  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

of  a  bow,  so  that  with  each  quay  and  each 
bridge  the  landscape  becomes  of  an  entirely 
different  character. 

At  the  little  Pont  de  la  Tournelle,  for  in- 
stance, what  could  be  of  more  impressive 
grandeur  than  the  view  of  the  old  Isle  de  la 
Cite  rising  in  gray  walls  from  the  very  water's 
edge  to  meet  the  massive  and  delicate  silhou- 
ette of  Notre  Dame?  But  from  the  Pont  des 
Arts,  at  the  foot  of  the  town,  the  Island 
of  the  City  is  entirely  different.  It  is  a  fan- 
tastic vessel,  with  the  spire  of  Ste.  Chapelle 
for  a  golden  mast,  which  cleaves  the  Seine 
with  its  elongated  point,  green  with  plants 
and  flowers,  like  a  prow. 

At  the  Pont  des  Invalides  the  scene  changes 
again.  At  the  turn  of  the  stream  the  horizon  is 
bounded  by  the  Trocadero,  rising  with  its  two 
minarets  from  the  side  of  a  hill,  and  you  would 
say  the  river  stopped  there  to  lose  itself  in  some 
mysterious  gulf  hidden  in  the  gardens  of  that 
Palace  of  the  Thousand  and  One  Nights.  Be- 
yond the  Pont  de  Passy,  near  the  Isle  des 
Cygnes,  you  are  in  Holland.  The  river  is  a 
melancholy  basin  whose  low,  green  shores  are 
bordered  by  dark,  smoking  factories.  Then,  as 
you  look  off  and  your  eyes  fall  on  the  hills  of 
Sevres  and  of  Meudon  outlined  in  soft,  un- 
dulating lines  against  the  sky,  and  you  seem 
to  be  sailing  in  some  old  French  print. 

Paris  is  like  a  fruit  divided  into  two  halves 


THE  CHARM  OF  PARIS.  5 

by  the  gleaming  steel  of  the  river,  and  over 
each  half  on  either  side  rises  a  height  which 
augments  the  impression  of  immensity.  On  the 
left  bank  it  is  the  Mountain  of  Sainte  Gene- 
vieve crowned  by  the  Pantheon,  with  its  belt 
of  columns  on  which  rests  its  enormous  dome. 
On  the  right  is  the  white  church  of  the  Sacre 
Coeur,  gleaming  on  the  hill  of  Mont  Martre 
like  some  celestial  vision.  It  is  at  its  threshold, 
rather  than  from  the  Eiffel  Tower  or  any- 
where else,  I  think,  that  you  get  the  most 
poignant  impressions  of  Paris  as  a  whole.  It 
lies  spread  out  before  you,  with  its  setting  of 
distant  hills,  its  swarming  expanse  of  houses 
dominated  here  and  there  by  palaces,  and 
broken  by  the  green  of  gardens ;  and  from  that 
distance  the  sounds  of  the  city  come  to  you 
only  as  one  great  suppressed  murmur,  a  mur- 
mur palpitating  with  the  life  of  this  great  heart 
of  the  old  world.  All  this  natural  beauty  it 
is  easy  to  recognize  as  one  of  the  great  advan- 
ages  of  Paris,  but  beauty  counts  for  very 
little  in  its  charm.  And,  indeed,  my  expe- 
rience is  that  Paris  is  not  one  of  the  cities 
whose  beauty  is  spoken  of  as  one  of  its  con- 
spicuous features,  as  with  Edinburgh,  for  in- 
stance. Most  people  who  go  there  in  the  sum- 
mer when  it  is  deserted  are  disappointed,  and 
if  you  ask  the  average  stranger  what  the  attrac- 
tion of  Paris  is,  he  rarely  answers  its  beauty, 
but    always    its    movement,    its  life;  by  which 


6  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

he  generally  means  some  such  thing  as  sitting 
at  a  little  table  on  the  boulevard,  or  going 
about  to  the  Bohemian  resorts  of  Montmartre, 
most  of  which  are  entirely  arrayed,  he  discov- 
ers later,  to  meet  his  preconceived  ideals,  and 
have  nothing  to  do  with  the  real  life  of  Paris 
at  all. 

For  that  matter,  what  can  you  fix  upon  as 
the  life  of  this  great  city,  where  each  quarter 
is,  as  it  were,  a  city  within  a  city,  having  its 
own  particular  character  and  its  own  esprit? 
It  is  as  hard  to  define  it  as  it  is  to  analyze  the 
heart  of  a  man  tossed  by  a  thousand  conflict- 
ing emotions.  And  yet  in  the  heart  of  a  town, 
as  in  the  heart  of  a  human  being,  you  can  al- 
ways find  dominant  characteristics  which  ex- 
plain   each. 

Many  years  ago  a  sentence  spoken  by  a  lit- 
tle Paris  hairdresser  first  gave  me  a  key  to 
Paris.  It  was  in  his  shop,  which  was  one  of 
those  places  where  everything  suggests  tradi- 
tions and  a  profession  which  has  been  handed 
down  from  generation  to  generation.  Over 
the  deep  azure  gulfs  formed  by  the  large  mir- 
rors in  the  little  saloon  at  the  back  were  pieces 
of  old  Normandy  faience  bearing  the  legend, 
"The  month  begins;"  relics  of  the  day  when  a 
man's  monthly  account  was  marked  by  a  piece 
of  pottery.  Two  or  three  cupboards  of  old 
carved  wood  stood  about,  and  in  one  of  the 
nasturtium-framed  windows  a  large  tortoise- 


THE  CHARM  OF  PARIS.  7 

shell  cat  was  tranquilly  sleeping.  All  at  once,  as 
the  proprietor's  wife  was  ministering  to  my  hair 
her  husband's  voice  floated  sharply  back  through 
the  stillness:  "Here  everybody  on  every 
round  of  the  ladder  can  get  his  share  of  Paris," 
he  said.  "Everybody  can  enjoy  life."  Oddly 
enough,  these  very  same  last  words  fell  from 
the  lips  of  the  sculptor  St.  Gaudens  a  short 
time  ago,  as  he  was  telling  some  French  friends 
in  a  general  conversation  why  Paris  differed 
from  other  cities.  "A  Paris  Ics  gens  jouissent 
dc  la  vie,"  he  said.  I  quote  the  French  be- 
cause ''jouissent  dc  la  vie''  always  seems  to 
me  to  have  a  little  different  signification  from 
the  English  *'to  enjoy  life."  I  noticed  this 
when  I  first  went  to  live  among  French  people 
through  the  way  in  which  they  spoke  of  "/a 
■zvV."  They  gave  an  impression  of  it  as  some 
sort  of  immense  outside  thing  forever  going  on 
for  which  you  were  in  no  way  personally  re- 
sponsible, but  could  dip  down  into  and  take 
out  your  share,  which  nevertheless  must  in- 
variably be  paid  for.  "C'est  la  vicT  the  Gen- 
eral's daughter  would  say  lightly  as  she  alluded 
to  those  maternal  misfortunes  in  consequence 
of  which  I  w-as  at  that  moment  under  her  roof ; 
"/£•  paie  ma  douloureuse,  a  la  dcstineef 
"Oh,  I  w'ould  rather  pay  my  douloureuse  in  that 
way  than  any  other,"  I  heard  a  charming 
young  French  married  woman  say  gaily  to 
some  one  who  was  condoling  with  her  on  her 


8  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

husband's  loss  of  fortune.  But  once  these  dues 
paid  to  Destiny,  both  one  and  the  other  would 
consider  that  it  owed  her  some  satisfaction,  and 
would  distinctly  include  this  in  her  scheme  of 
existence. 

That  a  certain  share  of  enjoyment  is  an 
inalienable  right  of  man  is  the  great  under- 
lying principle  of  French  genius,  and  out  of 
this  secret  springs  the  charm  of  Paris.  Else- 
where men  either  burn  themselves  out  with 
work  or  they  vegetate.  It  is  only  in  Paris  that 
they  establish  an  equilibrium  between  effort 
and  relaxation.  This  is  the  reason  why  the 
Parisians  always  get  the  credit  of  being  idlers 
and  loungers  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  output 
of  production  there  is  enormous.  But  from 
every  effort  a  man  looks  forward  to  getting 
some  immediate  return;  and,  while  one  return 
is  to  come  from  enjoyment  of  Paris,  some  one 
must  see  that  Paris  is  a  place  he  can  enjoy. 
This  is  at  once  the  source  of  her  splendor  and 
her  charm.  In  the  afternoon  at  the  stroke  of 
four  the  house  painter  puts  down  his  brush 
and  the  mason  his  trowel ;  each  rolls  a  cigarette 
and  stops  to  drink  a  glass  of  wine.  They  ex- 
pect meanwhile  to  delight  their  eyes  with  beau- 
tiful surroundings;  this  need  for  the  jonissancc 
dcs  yciix  which  to  other  nations  is  a  luxury  is 
a  first  necessity  to  the  French.  During  a  cen- 
tury and  a  half  the  Parisians  of  the  Middle 
Ages  improvised  for  themselves  masons  an4 


THE  CHARM  OF  PARIS.  9 

architects  to  build  Notre  Dame,  the  most  beau- 
tiful church  in  the  world.  And  their  descend- 
ants of  to-day  have  just  forced  the  City  Fathers 
to  tear  down  a  building  worth  a  million  of 
francs  so  they  can  look  at  the  Hotel  Cluny 
from  a  distance  of  fifty  yards.  A  few  months 
ago  they  obliged  the  city  to  buy  for  them  the 
Hotel  de  Lauzun,  a  year  ago  the  Hotel  de 
Lepelletier  de  Saint  Fargeau;  every  year  they 
vote  a  large  sum  of  money  for  some  aesthetic 
purpose.  If  Paris  is  beautiful  it  is  because  the 
Parisians  will  it  so.  It  had  at  its  head  for  a 
long  time,  no  doubt,  sovereigns  who  loved 
splendor  and  lavished  money  on  magnificent 
buildings.  And.  then,  in  the  Second  Empire 
and  the  Third  Republic  civil  engineers  at- 
tached to  the  Government,  like  Baron  Hauss- 
mann  and  Alphaud,  replaced  them.  But  if 
these  all  built  palaces,  planted  gardens,  pierced 
boulevards,  made  splendid  perspectives,  it  was 
only  because  they  marched  before  a  people 
who  demanded  these  things  to  compensate 
them  in  their  daily  life  of  toil. 

So  we  find  everywhere  in  the  French 
capital  the  charm  which  comes  from  the 
happy  mingling  with  taste  and  tact  of 
those  three  great  sources  of  enjoyment, 
nature,  art  and  souvenirs.  Take  the  Place  de 
la  Concorde,  for  instance,  with  its  splendid 
space  just  accented  by  the  obelisk  and 
bronze  fountain  in  th?  centre,  an4  the  statues 


10  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

of  the  cities  of  France  sitting  about  in  a  cir- 
cle. On  one  side  is  the  green  of  the  Elysian 
Fields,  and  on  the  other  that  of  the  Tuileries 
gardens;  while  the  twin  palaces,  which  you 
would  say  made  a  setting  for  the  whole,  are  the 
glories  of  the  architecture  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  so  exactly  are  they  adapted  by  their 
proportions  and  their  mingling  of  elegance  and 
majesty  to  the  place  for  which  they  are  in- 
tended. As  you  look  along  the  beautiful  route 
of  the  Champs  Elysees  your  eye  falls  on  Na- 
poleon's triumphial  arch;  and  then  a  double 
avenue  leads  you  to  the  Bois  de  Boulogne, 
which  has  not  only  the  elegance  of  a  park  for 
the  rich,  but  that  perfume  of  wildness  which 
makes  it  a  place  where  the  poor  spend  the  day 
with  their  children  on  Sundays  and  fete  days. 
That  everything  in  Paris  is  for  everybody 
and  everybody  is  apparently  getting  his  share 
of  enjoyment  out  of  it  is  one  secret  of  the  uni- 
versal atmosphere  of  bicn-etrc.  Nothing  is 
allowed  to  jar;  even  funerals  are  arranged  to 
give  the  melancholy  charm  of  stately  cere- 
monies, if  they  are  not  looked  at  as  fetes. 
"A  holiday  for  the  fete  of  Jules  Ferry"  is  the 
way  in  which  I  heard  a  little  boy  speak  of  the 
closing  of  school  for  Jules  Ferry's  funeral.  "If 
this  tine  weather  continues  the  day  of  the  dead 
will  be  very  gay  this  year,"  said  my  old  bonne 
just  before  the  "Jour  dcs  Morts."  She  thought 
of  the  great  baskets  of  chrysanthemums  tended 


THE  CHARM  OF  PARIS.  1 1 

by  white-capped  flower  women  sitting  among 
the  whirHng  leaves,  which  put  color  into  the 
streets  on  that  day,  and  all  Paris  in  family 
groups  clad  in  that  black  garb  which  to  her 
meant  holiday  going  about  in  stately  fashion 
to  put  flowers  on  the  tombs  of  its  dead.  Every- 
thing in  Paris  is  consecrated  by  a  fete.  -The 
Spring  means  the  Horse  Show,  the  flower 
show,  the  varnishing  days  of  the  salons,  of 
flowers  in  the  Bois  and  the  Grand  Prix.  Every- 
body gets  their  share,  for  those  who  do  not  go 
in  carriages  pay  two  sous  for  a  chair  on  one 
of  the  beautiful  avenues  and  watch  the  driv- 
ing. Every  day  during  the  season  they  get  a 
fine  spectacular  show  in  the  driving  between 
five  and  seven,  out  to  the  Alice  dcs  Acacias  in 
the  Bois.  Everything  which  makes  a  place  for 
itself  in  the  life  of  Paris  sooner  or  later  fur- 
nishes an  occasion  for  a  function.  The  last 
new  thing  has  been  the  automobile  show. 
When  shall  we  go  to  the  varnishing  day  of 
our  flying  machines? 

The  old  traditions  never  seem  to  die  out. 
On  Twelfth  Night  every  family  that  has  bread 
in  Paris  has  a  galctte  sent  to  it  as  a  present  by 
its  baker.  The  marmiton  you  see  walking  the 
street  in  his  white  dress,  as  the  little  baker's 
boys  flit  about  in  "Cyrano  de  Bergerac,"  per- 
haps carries  in  the  basket  on  his  head  the  same 
varieties  of  little  cakes  that  baker's  boys  carried 
a  century  ago.    Some  of  them  have  quaint  old 


12  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

homes  which  in  themselves  possess  a  charm. 
There  is  "Lcs  Puits  d' Amour ' — "Wells  of 
Love;"  there  is  still  the  Baba,  the  Savarin  and 
the  Madeleine.  In  the  morning  you  are  waked 
by  the  old  street  cries.  "Voici  du  mour-r-on 
pour  les  ftits-oi-seanx"  comes  in  a  plaintive 
minor  from  the  merchant  of  bird  seeds.  "Du 
from-agc  a  la  creme"  is  a  class  student  note; 
while  the  old-clothes  man  seems  to  answer  it 
antiphonally  in  "  'Chaud  'chaud  dliabits.''  The 
picturesque  figure  in  the  Basque  Bcrct  selling 
goats'  milk  from  his  herd  announces  his  pres- 
ence with  a  tune  almost  as  eternal  as  that  of 
the  piper  of  Kant's'  Grecian  urn.  Thus  has 
he  piped  to  his  l^ock  since  the  days  when 
Henri  of  Navarre  first  brought  some  goats 
and  their  herder  to  Paris  from  his  native 
Pyrenees. 

Study  the  streets  of  Paris  if  you  want  to  un- 
derstand her,  The  street  has  always  been  for 
the  Latins  something  wdiat  the  market  place 
was  to  the  ancient  Greeks.  And,  above  all, 
go  to  the  boulevard;  not  that  great  road  which 
stretches  from  the  Madeleine  to  the  Bastille, 
but  the  boulevard  proper,  which  goes  from  the 
Rue  Royale  to  the  Rue  Drouot.  Its  character 
is  not  the  same  that  it  was  ten  years  ago,  even 
five  years  ago ;  it  changes  from  day  to  day,  like 
life  itself.  The  celebrated  cafes  where  the  men 
in  the  movement  met,  talked,  discussed,  cre- 
ated the  atmosphere  of  Paris    are    no    more. 


THE  CHARM  OF  PARIS.  13 

They  have  been  transformed  into  brasseries 
through  which  the  world  passes  without  stop- 
ping. There  are  no  "boulevardiers"  now.  The 
boulevard  is  only  a  passage,  though  the  most 
luxurious  one  in  the  world,  like  a  great  arcade 
through  which  lounge  or  hasten  all  the  differ- 
ent elements  of  the  capital;  the  wealthy  part  of 
the  population  coming  from  the  Champs  Ely- 
sees  or  the  Pare  Monceau  entering  by  the 
Place  de  la  Madeleine;  the  business  world  com- 
ing from  the  Bourse  or  the  Marais  by  the  Rue 
du  Quatre  Septembre,  the  left  bank  of  the 
Seine  by  the  Avenue  de  I'Opera,  and  Mont- 
martre  and  the  Batignolles  by  the  Rue  Aubert, 
the  Rue  Halevy,  the  Rue  Laffitte,  the  Rue 
Drouot;  all  these  mingled  with  a  cosmopoli- 
tan stream  from  every  country  of  the  uni- 
verse. Life  on  the  boulevard  seems  more  in- 
tense and  concentrated  than  elsewhere.  Un- 
der your  hand  beats  all  the  agitation  of  a  peo- 
ple; you  touch  the  pulse  of  the  whole  world. 


The  Academie  Francaise 

AND  THE  OTHER  ACADEMIES. 

One  of  the  things  that  dawns  upon  you 
more  and  more  as  you  live  in  Paris  is  that 
all  the  places  are  filled.  Nothing  makes  you 
feel  this  more  than  the  Academie  Franqaise. 
Not  only  does  it  contain  seats  for  only  Forty 
Immortals,  and  one  of  these  must  die  before 
the  halo  of  immortality  can  descend  upon 
some  one  else,  but  when  it  holds  its  func- 
tions there  are  seats  for  only  so  many  of  the 
mortals.  In  other  places,  in  proportion  as 
mortals  multiply  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  new 
buildings  are  put  up  to  accommodate  them, 
with  more  seats.  In  Paris  this  is  not  so.  The 
old  gray  pile  of  the  Mazarin  palace,  in  which 
sits  the  Institute,  with  its  five  Academies,  has 
looked  out  over  the  Seine  for  three  htmdred 
years,  and  the  tiny  amphitheatre  inside  has 
grown  neither  larger  nor  smaller.  So  pre- 
cisely the  same  struggles  and  heart-burnings 
to  enter  it  and  be  among  the  Immortals,  and 
therefore  prove  the  right  to  be  considered 
of  Tout-Paris,  go  on  now  that  w^ere  seen  a 
century  ago  when  the  Academy  first  began  to 
sit  there.  "Dear,  dead  women,  .  .  .  what's 
14 


THE  ACADEMIE  FRANCA! SE.  15 

become  of  all  the  gold,  Used  to  hang  and 
brush  their  bosoms,"  I  thought,  the  first  time 
I  went  to  one  of  its  receptions,  and  watched 
the  file  of  the  beautiful  women  of  to-day 
throng  into  the  amphitheatre  in  a  chill,  white 
atmosphere  which,  until  it  took  on  warmth 
and  color  from  toilets  and  perfumes,  yon 
would  say  was  in  its  very  composition  crystal- 
lized thought  and  congealed  tradition.  What 
has  been  the  end  of  all  their  struggles?  Who 
are  the  Immortals  now? 

It  is  principally  the  women  who  keep  up 
"the  superstition  of  the  Academy."  This  is 
another  question  of  tradition.  Long  ago, 
when  Voltaire  was  made  an  Academician  by 
Madame  de  Pompadour,  he  said  that  it  were 
better  to  be  in  the  good  graces  of  a  King's 
mistress  than  to  write  a  hundred  volumes; 
and  even  now  when  there  are  no  more  Kings, 
with  their  mistresses,  women  still  have  an 
influence  of  untold  importance  on  an  Aca- 
demic election.  Mr.  Howells  has  said  that 
women  make  the  literature  in  America.  They 
do  not  make  the  literature  in  Paris,  but  they 
do  hold  the  Salons  and  make  the  vogue  with- 
out which  a  man  is  never  elected  an  Immortal. 
His  eligibility  for  this  reposes  on  some  such 
principle  as  that  which  governs  a  society  mar- 
riage. Someone  has  defined  a  mesalliance  as  a 
marriage  between  two  young  people  who  are 
not  accustomed  to  meet  in  the  same  houses. 


i6  PARIS  AS  IT  IS. 

So,  when  the  members  of  this  "pleasant  club 
for  elderly  gentlemen"  find  they  must  choose 
a  new  companion  to  whom  they  are  to  be 
united  as  long  as  they  live,  the  principal  thing 
they  demand  of  him  is  that  he  be  a  person 
they  are  in  the  habit  of  meeting  socially. 
For  this  reason,  the  simple  sentence:  "II  n'est 
pas  de  la  societe,"  settles  Zola's  pretensions 
as  an  Academic  candidate,  as  years  ago  the 
fact  that  Theophile  Gautier  was  slovenly  in 
his  dress  and  wore  his  hair  long,  affected  his. 
"I  will  vote  for  him,"  said  Guizot  sarcastically, 
of  a  certain  individual,  "because  he  is  polite, 
decorated  and  has  no  opinions." 

The  Academy  was  founded  at  a  time  when 
the  protection  of  a  king  or  some  personage 
of  rank  was  necessary  to  give  prestige  to 
writers,  and  to-day  it  is  a  sort  of  exclusive 
club  protected  by  the  State  which  has  nothing 
to  do  with  the  glory  of  French  letters,  and  no 
influence  upon  them.  Who  make  up  the  pres- 
ent list  of  the  Immortals?  Thirteen  men  who 
are  really  an  honor  to  the  literature  of  the 
country,  seven  upon  whose  mediocrity  every- 
body is  agreed,  eight  savants,  one  sculp- 
tor, an  archbishop,  four  politicians  and  five 
dukes.  You  see  in  the  number  the  sculptor 
Guillaume,  the  diplomat  Hanotaux,  the  arch- 
bishop Perraud,  the  mathematician  Bertrand, 
the  ex-Ministers  Freycinet  and  Ollivier,  the 
economist  Thureau  Dangin;  but  you  do  not 


THE  ACADEMIE   FRANC AISE.  17 

see  the  names  of  any  such  men  of  talent  as 
Zola,  the  Rosny,  the  Marguerite  brothers, 
Maurice  Barres,,Gebhart,  Huysmans,  Mistral, 
Porto  Riche,  de  Curel,  Richepin,  any  more 
than  you  saw  those  of  Alphonse  Daudet,  Ver- 
laine,  Flaubert,  Maupassant,  de  Goncourt, 
Baudelaire,  George  Sand,  Balzac,  or  long  ago, 
Moliere.  Academicians  are  very  often  not 
lettered  men  at  all.  Somebody,  I  do  not  re- 
member who,  gave  much  entertainment  tO 
himself  as  well  as  to  his  friends  by  making  a 
collection  of  autographs  of  the  Forty  in 
which  there  was  not  one  that  did  not  contain 
a  mistake  in  spelling.  "There  are  forty  of 
them  there  who  have  the  esprit  of  four,"  is  a 
well-known  mot.  Publishers  have  told  me  that 
the  famous  phrase  "de  IWcademie  Fran- 
qaise"  on  the  title  page  of  a  book  no  longer 
influences  in  the  slightest  way  its  sale.  From 
a  literary  standpoint  the  Academy  becomes 
every  year  more  and  more  a  tradition. 

From  its  social  side  it  gains  possibly  in 
prestige  because  all  the  time  it  is  growing 
richer.  Before  the  law  it  is  a  "personalite 
civile"  with  the  right  of  inheriting,  and  end- 
less are  the  legacies  it  receives  and  the  prizes 
it  disposes  of — prizes  bestowed  principally 
upon  the  books  of  those  men  and  women 
whom  Academicians  know.  The  little  cabals 
and  intrigues,  therefore,  that  are  always  in 
solution  in  all  society  centre  about  an  Acad- 


.8  PARIS   AS   IT  JS. 

eniician  like  crystals  around  a  thread.  In 
precedence  he  is  the  equal  of  a  duke  and 
higher  than  an  archbishop.  Octave  Feuillet 
used  to  tell  of  the  sudden  change  in  his  posi- 
tion in  his  own  country  when  he  became  an 
Academician.  Before  that  he  was  nothing 
but  a  writer,  a  man  of  no  importance,  and 
when  he  went  to  dine  at  the  chateau,  or  with 
any  of  the  great  people  of  the  neighborhood, 
he  was  always  the  last  to  go  in  to  the  table. 
After  his  election  he  was  invariably  placed 
at  the  right  of  the  hostess.  It  is  evident  that 
to  recognize  an  author  only  when  he  has  re- 
ceived a  sort  of  stamp  making  him  eligible 
for  society  cannot  be  a  real  gain  to  literature; 
if  it  levels  the  distance  between  him  and  a 
duke,  it  establishes  a  factitious  inequality  be- 
tween him  and  other  writers. 

But  from  all  this  it  is  easy  to  see  the  impor- 
tance, as  a  function,  of  a  fashionable  recep- 
tion at  the  Academy.  Go  just  before  one  and 
have  a  talk  with  old  M.  Pingard,  the  head  of 
the  bureau  of  administration,  son  and  grand- 
son of  the  old  Messieurs  Pingard,  who  were 
the  chiefs  of  this  bureau  before  him.  You 
will  find  him  sorting  an  apparently  number- 
less collection  of  little  violet,  blue,  green, 
mauve  and  white  bits  of  pasteboard,  and  be- 
moaning his  fate  at  being  obliged  to  make  a 
thousand  of  them  do  for  the  several  thousand 
people    who     have     asked     for     invitations. 


<-3 

1-4    u 

U    ° 


THE  ACADEMIE  FRANCAISE.  19 

"Women  have  written  me  from  everywhere; 
from  all  over  Paris  and  the  provinces," 
said  M.  Pingard  when  I  saw  him  last.  "I  have 
three  hundred  places  in  the  centre  which  go 
by  right  to  the  most  beautiful  women  of  Paris, 
but  think  of  all  it  takes  for  the  members  of 
the  various  Academies,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
twenty  for  the  incoming  member  and  all  those 
for  the  director,  and  for  the  ministries,  and 
for  the  administrations,  and  for  everybody. 
What  am  I  to  do  with  all  these  other  women? 
I  shall  set  their  beautiful  eyes  to  weeping,  and 
I  shall  not  even  have  the  consolation  of  wdp- 
ing  away  their  tears !  And  then  there  are  the 
foreigners;  the  Americans,  for  instance,  who 
have  so  much  enterprise!"  And  M.  Pingard 
went  on  to  tell  that  one  evening  when  he 
came  in  from  the  theatre  about  twelve  o'clock, 
he  was  surprised  to  find  drawn  up  before  the 
door  of  the  Institute  a  splendid  carriage  and 
pair.  From  it  stepped  a  man,  who  said  that 
he  was  an  American  and  had  received  a  card 
for  the  ceremony  the  next  day.  As  he  had 
understood  it  was  necessary  to  be  on  hand  at 
an  extremely  early  hour  in  the  morning  in 
order  to  get  a  place,  he  had  thought  it 
simpler  just  to  come  and  pass  the  night  in  the 
Court.  He  had  pillows  and  food  and  every- 
thing that  was  necessary,  he  added.  There 
was  no  tradition  authorizing  M.  Pingard  to 
let  any  one  sleep  all  night  in  a  carriage  in  the 


20  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

court  of  the  Institute,  he  was  obliged  to  in- 
form the  enterprising-  traveler.  "All  that  is 
necessary,  my  dear  sir,  is  to  send  a  good  valet 
de  chambre  early  in  the  morning  to  hold  your 
place,"  he  added,  and  the  discomforted  Amer- 
ican  drove  away.  He  had  probably  heard  of 
the  mot  of  a  stout  gentleman  who,  after  stand- 
ing for  several  hours  in  line  on  the  day  of  a 
solemnity  at  the  Institute,  exclaimed:  "Vrai- 
ment  il  est  moins  facile  d'entrer  ici  que  d'y 
etre  re^u!" 

I  cannot  imagine  a  more  desolate  place  in 
which  to  pass  a  night.  The  Institute  on 
ordinary  occasions  seems  like  some  forgot- 
ten island  in  the  great  city,  invincibly  resist- 
ing the  tide  of  advancement  in  ideas,  modes 
and  tastes  which  beats  around  it.  You  have 
even  a  material  impression  of  this  as  you 
leave  the  elastic  wooden  pavement  to  enter 
its  great,  surly  court,  and  tread  upon  the 
rough  and  unequal  gres  of  the  time  of  Louis 
XIV.  which  cover  it.  In  one  corner  gigantic 
chimney  pots  twisting  flame-like  tongues  of 
stone  await,  in  order  to  take  their  places  on 
the  roof,  some  royal  architect  with  sword 
and  jabot  who  will  never  come.  The  very 
air  there  seems  colder  and  more  oppressive, 
and  the  rare  passers-by  who  cut  short  the 
distance  between  the  Quai  Visconti  and  the 
Rue  Mazarine  by  passing  through  the  court 
hasten   their   steps   until   at   the    entrance. 


THE  ACADEMIE   FRANC AISE.  21 

near  the  studio  of  the  engraver  of  medals, 
Chaplain,  they  come  upon  a  beautiful  old 
well  of  wrought  iron,  greening  in  summer 
with  a  panache  of  clematis,  sole  and  unex- 
pected smile  in  this  temple  of  somnolent 
austerity. 

On  a  reception  day  a  spell  comes  over  this 
sleeping  palace.  By  five  in  the  morning  a 
line  of  white-capped  bonnes,  blue-bloused 
commissionaires,  humble  folk  of  every  con- 
dition, has  begun  to  form  before  it,  each 
holding  a  card  and  keeping  a  place  for  its 
owner  till  the  doors  shall  open  at  twelve. 
On  the  back  of  these  a  liveried  attache  of 
the  Academy  has  stamped  a  number;  the  only 
concession  that  the  Institute  will  make  to  the 
modern  demand  for  numbered  places.  The 
loungers  of  the  Parisian  crowd  gather  round 
them,  and  the  special  Academic  beggars;  for 
every  Academician  has  his  own  particular 
beggar.  Each  adopts,  as  it  were,  an  Acade- 
mician. He  knows  the  route  of  his  great  man, 
and  never  fails  to  be  in  his  patron's  path  as 
he  goes  to  the  Institute,  and  "to  pass  the 
time  of  day."  "Ah,  Monsieur;  all  my  com- 
pliments! How  finely  you  are  looking!  I 
have  never  seen  you  in  more  magnificent 
health.''  Every  beggar  begs  of  his  own 
Academician,  and  of  no  one  else.  Never  the 
mendicant  of  Jules  Claretie  will  ask  anything 
of  Franqoi?  Coppee,  nor  the  beggar  of  Fran- 


2  2  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

Qois  Coppee  anything  of  Jules  Claretie. 
"Why  do  you  always  address  yourself  to  me 
and  not  to  any  of  these  other  gentlemen?" 
Jules  Claretie  demanded  one  day  of  his 
shadow.  "I  haven't  the  honor  of  their  ac- 
quaintance," the  man  answered,  with  dignity. 
For  many  years  Jules  Claretie  had  the  same 
beggar.  "I  did  what  I  could  for  him,"  said 
the  famous  director  of  the  Fran(;ais,  "and  the 
only  time  I  hesitated  was  when — more 
ragged  than  Job — he  asked  me  to  give  him 
an  opportunity  of  assisting  at  a  spectacle  he 
had  never  seen — a  Tuesday  at  the  Comedy 
Frangaise!" 

About  half-past  eleven  carriages  em- 
blazoned with  old  armorial  bearings  begin 
to  line  the  quai  before  the  Institute,  and 
charmingl}'  dressed  women  and  distinguished 
men  with  red  ribbons  in  their  button-holes 
to  fill  the  court-yard  and  to  replace  the  long 
lines  of  waiting  servants.  Just  as  the  stroke 
of  twelve  rings  solemnly  out,  as  it  has  rung 
so  many  time  for  a  hundred  years  on  such 
scenes,  another  liveried  attache  appears  at 
each  of  the  doors  with  an  enormous  key. 
Five  minutes  later  and  every  seat  in  the  am- 
phitheatre except  those  in  the  centre  reserved 
for  the  three  hundred  most  beautiful  women 
of  Paris  and  its  greatest  celebrities,  are 
filled,  and  then  everybody  sits  for  an  hour 
waiting  for  the  ceremonies  to  begin, 


THE  ACADEMIE   PRANCAISE.  23 

The  occasion  is  frigidly  solemn.  There  is 
none  of  that  bright  gaiety  about  it,  that  air 
of  a  social  function  which  hangs  over  first 
nights,  or  vanishing  days,  or  any  of  the  other 
gatherings  of  Tout-Paris.  People  talk  in 
subdued  v^hispers.  Now  and  then  there  is  a 
sort  of  suppressed  murmur  as  some  person- 
age like  the  Princess  Mathilde,  or  Madame 
Aubernon,  or  the  "Countess  Diane,"  or  the 
beautiful  Madame  Gauthereau — an  Ameri- 
can, by  the  way — enters.  At  last  the  double 
rows  of  soldiers  outside  present  arms.  An 
imposing  old  gentleman  in  silk  knickerbock- 
ers and  a  gold  chain  throws  open  the  central 
door,  and  the  Academicians,  one  by  one, 
saunter  in  in  their  green  coats  embroidered 
with  laurel  leaves  in  silk,  bow  and  smile  to 
their  friends,  and  sit  down  on  the  wooden 
benches  covered  with  faded  green  velvet 
which  have  replaced  the  forty  arm-chairs  of 
the  time  of  Louis  XIV. 

The  first  one  of  these  ceremonies  at  which 
I  ever  assisted  was  one  which,  from  the  im- 
portance of  the  names  interested  in  it,  would 
have  been  characterized  by  M.  Pingard  as 
causing  a  *'vrai  delire."  M.  Andre  Theuriet 
was  received  into  the  chair  of  M.  Alexandre 
Dumas  fils,  and  M.  Paul  Bourget  replied  to 
his  address.  M.  Theuriet,  a  genial-looking 
little  man  who  has  apotheosized  the  simple 
life  of  country  towns  in  genr^  pictures  like 


24 


FAKIS   AS   IT  IS. 


Dutch  paintings,  and  written  charming  pas- 
toral poems,  read  a  discourse  to  prove  that 
Alexandre  Dumas  fils  was  a  precursor  of 
Ibsen.  That  Dumas  was  the  first  person  to  in- 
troduce on  the  stage  an  "idealism  militant," 
was  his  point;  a  theatre  full  of  consciences 
which  sought  a  rule  of  conduct  from  within 
and,  after  finding  it,  opposed  it  to  social  con- 
ventions. It  was  a  good  speech  and  so  was 
Paul  Bourget's  psychological  exposition  of 
Dumas's  methods  and  theories  which  fol- 
lowed. But  as  I  listened  to  what  Aca- 
demicans  made  out  of  the  two,  I  wondered 
whether,  more  than  Ibsen,  Alexander  Dumas 
had  meant  to  put  into  his  pieces  all  that 
people  got  from  them.  Some  one  in  Paris 
once  asked  Ibsen  what  was  exactly  the  mean- 
ing of  a  certain  passage  in  "Solness."  "I'm 
sure  I  don't  know,"  was  the  answer  of  the 
old  dramatist.  "I  used  to  think  that  there 
were  two  sources  from  which  people  could 
find  out  what  I  meant  in  my  plays,  the  bon 
Dieu  and  Ibsen.  Now  I've  made  up  my  mind 
that  there's  only  one,  and  that's  the  bon 
Dieu." 

It  must  be  a  strange  feeling  for  the  other 
Immortals  to  listen  to  these  discourses  and 
feel  that  some  day  some  one  will  be  making  of 
each  of  them  a  "final  and  definite  portrait," 
and  that  there  is  no  way  of  escaping  from  it! 
This  is  a  melancholy  sensation,  I  am  told, 


THE   AC  A  DEM  IE   FRANC  AISE.  25 

and  as  to  the  incoming  member,  an  unbroken 
chain  of  testimony  goes  to  establish  the  fact 
that  assuming  this  sort  of  immortality,  gives 
a  man  one  of  the  worst  quarters  of  an  hour 
of  his  life.  Thiers,  when  he  was  received, 
was  Minister  of  the  Interior,  and  at  such  a 
height  of  pohtical  glory  that  he  considered  it 
beneath  his  dignity  to  make  the  traditional 
visits  to  the  members  to  ask  for  their  votes, 
and  simply  informed  them  of  the  honor 
he  was  disposed  to  confer  upon  the  Academy 
in  consenting  to  be  elected.  And  yet  he  told 
Sardou  that  he  had  never  known  stage-fright 
in  his  life  but  once,  and  that  was  when  he  got 
up  to  read  his  speech. 

We  all  know  Emerson's  remark  upon  the 
inward  tranquility  which  comes  to  a  woman 
from  the  consciousness  of  being  perfectly 
well-dressed.  In  the  same  way  there  is  noth- 
ing that  can  deal  such  a  blow  to  the  stoutest 
masculine  courage  as  to  be  obliged  to  stand 
up  for  the  first  time  in  Academic  costume 
before  a  fashionable  audience;  especially 
when  "not  by  nature  that  way  built,"  as  the 
English  said  of  Prince  Henry  of  Battenburg 
when  he  donned  the  "breeks  and  kilt."  The 
Academicians  seldom  have  the  facade  of  what 
they  represent.  They  are  generally  elected  at 
an  age  when  they  are  beginning  to  take  on 
embonpoint  with  their  fireside  habits  and 
slippers;  and  the  green  coat  embroidered  with 


26  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

laurel  leaves  after  a  design  made  a  century 
ago  by  the  painter  David  to  please  Napoleon, 
who  loved  panache  as  much  as  any  boy  and 
uniformed  everybody  around  him,  and  the 
childish  mother  of  pearl  sword  are  not  cal- 
culated to  give  ease  of  manner  to  many  men, 
especially  to  those  who  have  not  kept  young 
and  slender  figures. 

Think  of  a  person  like  Renan  in  such  a 
dress,  a  man  who  seemed  to  waddle  on  his 
stomach — which  you  saw  first — and  then  for- 
got instantly,  the  moment  you  caught  sight  of 
his  charming  smile,  full  of  bonhomie  and  in- 
dulgence. He  considered  himself  a  martyr 
to  the  "habit  vert,"  and  he  was  the  greatest 
martyr  to  it  that  ever  lived.  He  spent 
grudgingly  in  the  beginning  the  seven  hun- 
dred and  fifty  francs  for  a  complete  outfit,  and 
fancied  that  was  the  end  of  it.  This  was 
reckoning  literally  without  his  host.  No 
sooner  had  he  taken  his  seat  than  he  began 
to  grow  stout,  and  he  continued  to  increase 
in  size  with  alarming  rapidity.  Each  time  he 
took  out  his  embroidered  coat  and  tried  to 
put  it  on  it  seemed  to  have  shrunk.  At  last 
he  could  just  squeeze  himself  into  it,  but 
could  no  longer  move  his  arms,  and  he  sug- 
gested some  enormous  turtle,  who,  to  keep 
his  equilibrium,  had  been  stood  upon  his  hind 
legs.  The  tailor  was  sent  for,  for  the  twen- 
tieth time,  but  could  do  nothing  more.    The 


Ready    for    School. 


THE  ACADEMIE  FRANCAISE.  27 

only  thing,  he  said,  was  to  order  a  new  gar- 
ment. The  great  philosopher  did  not  propose 
to  be  daunted  by  a  mere  coat.  "I  say,  my 
friend,"  he  said  to  the  tailor,  with  that 
winning  charm  which  never  failed  to  gain  his 
audience,  "like  Berenger,  I  love  my  old  coat. 
It  would  be  a  real  grief  for  me  to  separate 
myself  from  it.  You  are  a  man  of  talent  who 
knows  all  the  secrets  of  his  art.  Would  it  not 
be  possible  to  make  some  clever  arrangement 
of  this  costume  so  as  to  give  it  back  the  ele- 
gance it  has  lost?"  The  tailor  let  himself  be 
convinced,  and  accomplished  miracles.  Gores 
and  biases  were  introduced  into  the  back  of 
M.  Renan.  The  man  of  talent  pieced  out  the 
linings,  inflated  the  sleeves,  lengthened  the 
tails,  changed  the  course  of  the  embroideries. 
And  M.  Renan  had  the  supreme  satisfaction 
of  dying  without  having  been  obliged  to  re- 
new his  Academic  outfit. 

The  trials  of  Academicians  must  have  been 
much  greater  in  the  old  days  when  they 
wore  their  dress  into  society.  Ampere,  the 
famous  chemist,  used  to  tell  an  excellent 
story  upon  himself  in  this  connection.  He 
had  gone  to  a  soiree  to  lecture  upon  a  subject 
very  near  his  heart,  and  had  so  warmed  up 
with  his  own  eloquence  as  entirely  to  forget 
his  surroundings.  All  at  once  a  sudden  con- 
sciousness of  reality  rushed  over  him,  ancf 
he  looked  around  to  find,  to  his  astonishment, 


28  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

tliat  the  room  was  entirely  empty  except  for 
a  single  person:  the  mistress  of  thehousetran- 
quilly  asleep  on  a  sofa  before  him.  The  most 
delicate  thing  to  do  appeared  to  the  Academ- 
ician to  slip  out  quietly,  without  waking  her, 
but  as  ill-luck  would  have  it,  it  so  happened 
that  exactly  between  the  woman's  back  and 
the  cushion  was  the  savant's  sword,  which  he 
had  put  there  so  as  to  be  more  at  ease  while 
talking.  The  excellent  Ampere  tiptoed  over 
to  the  sofa,  and,  kneeling  down,  tried  to  with- 
draw this  softly  without  disturbing  his  fair 
friend.  Suddenly,  to  his  horror,  the  blade 
came  away,  while  the  sheath  stayed,  and 
meanwhile  the  sleeper  awoke  and  began  to 
scream  loudly  at  seeing  Ampere,  the  peaceful 
Ampere,  on  his  knees  before  her,  brandishing 
a  naked  sword.  Everything  was  explained, 
but  you  can  fancy  how  Paris  laughed  the  next 
day. 

For  that  matter,  what  would  she  do  with- 
out the  perpetual  chain  of  Academic  jokes 
which  has  not  once  failed  her  for  several  hun- 
dred years?  Pailleron  was  admitted  to  the 
Academy  only  on  his  play,  "Le  Monde  oil  Ton 
s'ennuie,"  which  made  people  laugh  over  one 
of  the  Academic  salons,  Madame  Aubernon 
de  Nerville's;  and  the  celebrated  Renan  story 
of  this  same  house — how  at  dinner  Madame 
de  Nerville  rang  a  little  bell  when  an  Academ- 
ician   was    about  to  speak,  and    how,  when 


THE  ACADEMIE  FRANCAISE.  29 

silence  was  made  for  Renan,  he  asked  for 
some  more  peas — has  been  served  up  with  all 
the  vegetables,  in  all  languages. 

Another  house  of  the  same  sort  is  evi- 
dently conducted  upon  the  same  principle. 
On  the  mantel-piece  in  the  dining-room  is 
this  inscription:  "At  a  repast  in  which  Join- 
ville  figured  with  the  King  St.  Louis,  a  clerk 
spoke  in  a  low  tone  to  his  neighbor.  Tlie 
king  said  to  him:  'Why  do  you  speak  thus? 
Either  what  you  say  presents  some  interest 
and,  therefore,  we  should  all  extract  some 
profit  from  it,  or  it  is  only  vain  words,  and 
then  it  were  better  to  keep  silent!'  " 

Stories  of  the  celebrated  Oppert  are  a  fruit- 
ful source  of  entertainment  for  Paris.  He  is 
the  original  of  the  famous  scene  in  Anatole 
France's  "Le  Lys  Rouge" — book  with  a  key 
— between  the  philologist  Schmoll,  "who 
knew  all  the  languages  except  the  French," 
and  Marmet,  whose  unique  study  was  the 
Etruscan  tongue,  "of  which  neither  he  nor 
any  one  else  had  ever  succeeded  in  learn- 
ing a  line."  The  two  savants  perpetually 
quarrelled,  and  especially  on  the  subject  of 
the  Latin  writers,  which  Marmet  insisted  on 
quoting,  and  wrongly.  One  day  they  met  on 
the  steps  of  the  Institute,  and  Schmoll  put  out 
his  hand.  "I  don't  know  you,  sir,"  said  Mar- 
met. "Do  you  take  me  for  a  Latin  inscrip- 
tion, then?"  retorted  Schmoll.    In  the  original 


30  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

scene  the  mot  was  still  more  amusing,  "You 
must  take  me,  then,  for  a  cuneiform!" 

I  myself  once  had  the  rare  good  fortune 
to  be  present  at  a  delicious  scene  in  an  Aca- 
demic salon.  It  was  at  a  soiree  where  one  of 
the  guests  was  a  Chinese  prince,  in  a  splendid 
robe  of  yellow  silk,  and  another  an  Academ- 
ician, as  absent-minded  as  he  was  learned.  I 
saw  the  latter  overturn  a  jardiniere.  A  tre- 
mendous crash  resounded  through  the  rooms, 
and  everybody,  rushing  to  the  spot  from 
which  it  came,  found  the  fragments  of  porce- 
lain lying  upon  the  floor,  the  plant  broken,  its 
earth  scattered,  and,  conspicuously  near,  two 
individuals,  the  absent-minded  Academician 
and  the  Chinese  in  his  robe  of  yellow  silk.  It 
must  have  been  one  of  those  moments  for  an 
Immortal  when  mortal  temptations  assailed 
him  sorely.  Only  a  glance,  a  raising  of  the 
eye-lids,  and  the  brunt  of  that  story  would  be 
laid  forever  on  a  Chinese  robe,  instead  of  re- 
maining as  a  heavy  weight  for  life  in  the 
baggage  of  an  Immortal.  Every  man  has  his 
price,  and  this  one  had  his.  In  a  few  mo- 
ments "C'etait  le  Chinois!"  circulated  rapidly 
through  the  rooms. 

These  dififerent  tales  have  carried  me  quite 
out  of  the  Academic  Franqaise  into  the  other 
Academies,  for  Oppert  is  a  member  of  the 
Academic  des  Inscriptions  et  Belles  Lettres, 
and  Ampere  belonged  to  the  Academic  des 


THE  ACADEMIE  FRANCAISE.  31 

Sciences;  the  two  Academies  of  which  we 
hear  least,  and  yet  which  are  worth  more 
than  any  of  the  others.  If  the  case  of  the 
Institute  as  a  government  institution  were  to 
be  plead,  entirely  outside  of  the  individual 
value  of  any  of  its  members,  who  have  many 
of  them  rendered  so  much  service  to  prog- 
ress as  to  be  beyond  criticism,  it  could  easily 
be  proved  that  the  two  branches  I  have  just 
named,  to  which  should  be  added  the  Acade- 
mic des  Sciences  morales  et  politiques, 
founded  only  fifty  years  ago,  were  of  the 
greatest  value  and  usefulness.  They  are  socie- 
ties of  savants  renowned  for  their  knowledge 
of  science,  of  antiquity,  and  their  deep  re- 
searches in  social  and  political  economy. 
Simply  because  they  are  organized  by  the 
State,  which  gives  them  to  the  crowd  a  stupid 
air  of  apparently  claiming  to  hold  the  mon- 
opoly of  genuine  science,  patented,  their  mem- 
bers pass  for  being  conceited  and  exclusive. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  they  are  just  the  opposite; 
as  they  prove  by  attaching  to  themselves  as 
corresponding  members  pretty  much  all  the 
savants  of  the  world,  and  in  encouraging,  by 
the  numerous  prizes  of  which  they  dispose, 
an  enormous  number  of  students  whose  work 
otherwise  would  run  the  risk  of  being  refused 
by  publishers,  and  remaining  fruitless. 

By  the  side  of  these  the  Academic  Fran- 
^aise,  as  I  think  I  have  shown,  is,  on  the  con- 


32  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

trary,  of  no  real  use.  I  am  not  sure,  how- 
ever, but  that  the  great  mass  of  the  French, 
with  their  love  for  materializing  things,  would 
feel  as  though  esprit  and  letters  were  dead 
unless  they  sometimes  saw  them  tangibly  in- 
carnated in  green  coats  and  cocked  hats. 
These  make  an  excellent  efifect,  too,  in  proces- 
sions. Some  of  them  are  always  detailed  for 
every  official  ceremony.  And  probably  it  is 
a  good  thing  to  give  to  forty  gentlemen  a 
means  of  never  growing  old  by  setting  them 
a  perpetual  task  which  will  never  be  finished, 
such  as  that  of  revising  the  French  dictionary. 
It  prevents  them  from  saying  with  one  of  their 
compatriots  of  a  certain  respectable  age: 
"The  gout  has  bestowed  upon  me  the  arm- 
chair the  Academy  has  never  been  willing  to 
give  me!" 

But  the  Academic  des  Beaux  Arts  as  an 
institution  positively  does  harm.  In  its  very 
composition  there  is  an  irreparable  defect. 
This  is  that  even  its  youngest  members  are 
getting  on  toward  sixty.  It  is  known  that 
outside  of  a  few  rare  exceptions,  Henner,  for 
instance,  or  Puvis  de  Chavannes,  who  did  not 
belong  to  the  Institute,  an  artist  loses  little  by 
little,  with  age,  his  power  of  imagination,  his 
surety  of  hand,  his  clearness  of  vision;  and 
what  is  more  serious  still,  his  ideal  and  his 
taste  are  always  of  the  time  when  he  had  his 
greatest  successes.    So  the  painters,  the  sculp- 


THE  ACADEMIE  PRANCAISE.  33 

tors,  the  architects,  the  engravers,  and  the 
musicians  of  the  Institute  who  form  the 
Academic  des  Beaux  Arts  are  and  always  will 
be  twenty  or  thirty  years  behind  the  contem- 
porary movement  in  art.  Instead  of  con- 
tributing to  its  progress  they  retard  it.  Not 
only  do  they  absorb  a  large  part  of  the  orders 
given  by  the  State,  but  they  are  the  principal 
judges  of  those  which  are  given  to  others.  It 
is  they  who  are  the  professors  at  the  ficole 
des  Beaux  Arts,  and  finally,  and  above  every- 
thing else,  they  distribute  every  year  an 
enormous  quantity  of  prizes  in  money  which 
they  give  only  to  those  disciples  who  bend 
themselves  to  their  taste;  very  often,  unfor- 
tunately, against  all  their  own  tendencies. 
The  result  of  this  shows  itself  with  special 
force  in  the  annual  competitions  for  the  Prix 
de  Rome.  You  see  there  any  number  of 
young  men  who  have  spent  their  time  doing 
nothing  but  making  imitations  of  Bonnat, 
Bouguereau,  Hebert,  Laurens,  Falguiere, 
Mercie,  Pascal,  Chaplain,  Massenet,  Reyer, 
simply  because  to  compete  for  a  prize,  or,  as 
it  is  called,  "monter  en  loge,"  will  give  them 
a  subsidy  which  will  let  them  live  a  whole 
year.  During  the  last  twenty  years,  out  of  all 
the  laureates  of  this  melancholy  Prix  de 
Rome,  a  single  one,  Besnard,  after  having 
his  personality  enslaved  during  the  best  years 
of  his  youth,  has  been  able  to  get  it  back; 


34 


PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 


something  indispensable  for  any  really  fine 
work  of  art. 

I  say  for  twenty  years,  I  might  say  for  two 
hundred  and  fifty  years,  from  the  time  that 
the  Academic  des  Beaux  Arts  has  existed. 
More  than  a  century  ago  the  great  painter 
David  cried  to  the  members  of  the  National 
Convention:  "Talents  lost  to  posterity!  Great 
men,  misunderstood!  I  will  quiet  your  dis- 
dained shades.  Victims  of  Academies,  you 
shall  be  avenged  for  your  misfortunes.  In 
the  name  of  humanity,  in  the  name  of  patriot- 
ism, by  your  love  for  art,  and  above  all  by 
your  love  for  youth,  destroy  these  fatal  Acad- 
emies which  can  no  longer  exist  under  a  free 
regime." 

And  free  America,  whose  youth  with  its 
splendid  initiative  has  never  yet  known  what 
it  was  to  be  enslaved  and  trammeled  by  worn- 
out  traditions,  would  have  a  "Prix  de  Paris!" 


The  Comedie  Francaise. 

"I  drink  to  Moliere,"  said  M.  Jules  Claretie 
one  evening  recently,  "to  Moliere  and  his  ex- 
cellent servitors.  It  was  he  who,  under  Louis 
XIV.,  through  propagating  socialism  of  the 
best  sort  —  co-operation  and  fraternity — 
founded  this  admirable  house,  so  solid  and  so 
durable.  I  hope  that  it  may  last  as  long  as 
our  dear  France  herself,  for  it  is  one  of  the 
jewels  of  the  patric.'" 

That  night  after  the  curtain  was  lowered  on 
the  performance  at  the  Theatre  Francais  the 
scene-shifters  drew  over  it,  on  the  stage  side, 
a  canvas  representing  a  scene  from  a  salon.  In 
the  center  they  hung  a  portrait  of  Moliere. 
The  stage  itself  was  arranged  as  in  the  last  act 
of  the  "Marriage  du  Figaro."  At  one  end  they 
placed  the  poet's  bust,  and  before  that  a  large 
table  and  five  small  ones,  all  beautifully  ar- 
ranged for  a  supper.  In  the  place  of  honor 
at  the  large  table  M.  Claretie,  director  of  the 
theatre,  seated  himself  at  one  o'clock  with 
the  societaires  and  pensionnaires  around  him. 
There  was  none  of  that  precedence  on  that  oc- 
casion which  ordinarily  rules  the  Frangais  as 
rigidly  as  a  court.  At  M.  Claretie's  right  was 
35 


36  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

Mme.  Barctta,  the  doyenne  of  the  societaires, 
and  on  his  left  Mile.  Geniat,  the  youngest  pen- 
sionnairc.  Thus,  for  the  first  time  in  the  his- 
tor  of  the  theatre,  the  whole  Comedie  partook 
of  a  real  supper  together  on  the  stage  in  honor 
of  the  birthday  of  Moliere,  and  thus  founded 
a  new  tradition  in  that  celebrated  old  house. 
"I  drink  to  the  one-hundredth  supper  to 
Moliere,"  the  director  said  in  ending  his  toast; 
"to  his  house,  which  is  also  the  house  of  Cor- 
neille,  Racine  and  Victor  Hugo;  to  Moliere 
and  his  grandchildren,  and  to  the  future  of  the 
Comedie  Frangaise." 

When  I  think  of  the  social  life  of  Paris. 
Moliere's  birthday  parties  come  up  to  me  as 
one  of  its  features.  Many  a  time  I  have  helped 
at  the  celebration  of  one  of  these  in  a  specially 
arranged  performance  at  the  Franqais,  end- 
ing with  the  crowning  of  the  poet's  bust.  Most 
of  all,  however,  I  think  the  Moliere  afternoons 
on  Mardi  Gras  delight  me.  The  world  is  en 
fete,  and  one  of  the  most  charming  things 
about  it  is  the  children  at  the  Franqais.  You 
see  whole  families  there  together,  and  the  foyer 
between  the  acts  is  a  garden  of  small  folk. 
exquisitely  mannered  little  creatures,  conduct- 
ing themselves  exactly  like  little  men  and 
women.  Nowhere  can  you  see  an  audience 
more  finely  representative  of  the  best  French 
people  than  at  the  Franqais  on  the  afternoon 
of  Mardi  Gras.    When  Paris  has  given  herself 


THE  COMEDIE  FRANCAISE.  2,7 

up  with  particular  zest  to  the  spirit  of  the  da\ 
what  a  strange  experience  it  is  to  come  out 
into  the  bizarre  carnival  world;  trees  hung 
with  long,  blue,  green,  yellow,  red  and  violet 
serpentine  streamers,  ground  soft  to  the  feet 
with  multi-colored  confetti,  and  even  people 
red,  blue,  green,  violet  and  yellow,  in  the  same 
way.  What  if  the  world  had  been  made  like 
that  in  the  beginning  I  have  sometimes 
thought?  What  kind  of  ideas  should  we  have 
— red,  blue,  green,  violet  and  yellow?  Carni- 
val is  indelibly  associated  in  my  mind  with  the 
souvenir  of  Moliere. 

This  theatre  calls  itself  the  House  of  Moliere 
and  calls  him  its  ancestor,  but  it  really  goes 
back  much  farther  than  to  his  day.  The  first 
theatre  in  Paris  was  founded  not  long  after  the 
massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew,  when  a  com- 
pany of  strolling  comedians  came  and  estab- 
lished themselves  in  the  old  city  and  founded 
the  Theatre  du  Marais.  In  the  time  of  Louis 
XIV.  Paris  had  three  theatres.  The  grand 
monarch  united  the  two  principal  companies 
and  made  them  an  ofificial  troupe,  "in  order," 
he  said,  "that  the  representations  of  the  come- 
dians might  be  more  perfect."  For  a  hundred 
years  or  so  they  moved  about  from  one  house 
to  another.  Now  we  find  them  in  the  Palais 
Royal,  now  in  a  tennis  court  standing  on  what 
is  to-day  the  Passage  du  Pont  Neuf,  for  twelve 
years  in  the  Tuileries.     In    1782  the  troupe  of 


38  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

the  Comedie  went  to  the  present  Odeon,  and 
there  it  stayed  until  the  Revolution,  when  it 
was  suppressed  and  its  actors  imprisoned.  Na- 
poleon, as  first  consul,  reorganized  it,  and  es- 
tablished it  in  its  present  home  in  the  Rue  de 
Richelieu,  where  it  has  remained  ever  since. 

It  was  Louis  XIV.,  we  see,  who  was  its 
actual  founder.  He  it  was  who  had  the  idea  of 
making  it  a  co-operative  association,  and  es- 
tablishing pensions  for  retiring  members.  On 
this  is  based  the  fundamental  principle  of  the 
Franqais,  the  institution  of  two  classes  of 
actors:  societaires  who  are  co-partners  with 
the  theatre,  have  a  voice  in  its  government,  in 
the  choice  of  the  plays,  a  share  in  the  yearly 
profits,  and  retire  with  a  pension;  and  pen- 
sionnaires  engaged  by  the  year  at  a  fixed  sal- 
ary, with  the  prospect  of  being  elected  socie- 
taires after  a  certain  probation.  This  was  part 
of  the  vast  scheme  of  centralization  of  Louis 
XIV.,  of  his  plan  for  organizing  not  only  the 
arts,  but  literature,  and  personifying  them  in 
grand  institutions.  But,  though  it  is  true  that 
he  gave  the  Comedie  durability  and  a  material 
existence,  as  M.  Regnier,  one  of  its  historians 
and  a  former  societaire,  wrote,  the  great  poet 
gave  it  his  glory  and  his  name,  "which  in  times 
of  danger  has  proved  more  efficacious  than 
contracts  and  regulations  in  protecting  the 
House  of  Moliere." 

Even  to-day  it  is  the  name  of  the  great  com- 


Foyer  of  the  Theatre  Fran^ais. 


The  Theatre  Frangais  (recently  burned). 


THE  COM  ED  IE  FRANCAISE.  39 

edian  which  holds  the  house  together.  The 
Comedie  Franqaise,  wherever  it  has  been,  has 
given  a  durable  and  stable  home  for  two  cen- 
turies to  that  drama  for  which  the  French 
have  such  a  passionate  love,  and  Moliere 
has  always  been  the  master  of  it.  "Salue  an 
Monsieur,"  one  of  my  friends  heard  the  coach- 
man of  a  Paris  cab  say,  lifting  his  hat  as  he 
passed  the  statue  of  Moliere  in  the  Rue  de 
Richelieu.  And  he  is  a  Monsieur  to-day  to  all 
the  citizens  of  France,  even  the  humblest.  He 
remains  ever  modern,  because,  while  he  ex- 
poses the  eternal  hypocrisies  and  stupidity  of 
human  nature,  he  so  holds  them  up  to  ridicule 
that  he  is  a  perpetual  solace  for  the  pettiness 
of  daily  life. 

M.  Claretie  might  have  said  more  in  his 
toast,  for  the  Fran(;ais  is  not  only  one  of 
the  jewels  of  France,  but  far  more,  perhaps, 
than  the  French  themselves  imagine,  it  seems 
to  me  one  of  the  fundamental  stones  upon 
which  rests  all  the  real  prestige  of  French  life. 
It  has  a  unique  place  in  the  world.  Do  away 
with  the  French  opera,  there  would  be  plenty 
of  places  in  other  countries  where  you  could 
hear  good  music,  and  good  French  music,  just 
as  well.  Suppress  the  Louvre,  yet  scattered 
about  in  other  museums  would  be  enough 
treasures  to  form  a  collection  which  would 
give  you  exactly  the  same  pleasure  you  get 
now  from  those  in  the  old  palace  of  the  kings 


40  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

of  France*  But  the  stage  of  the  Comedie 
Frangaise,  over  which  the  State  has  so 
jealously  watched  for  two  hundred  years 
and  seen  that  three  times  a  week  at  least 
were  played  some  of  the  chef  d'oeuvres  of 
the  French  tongue,  has  an  entirely  dif- 
ferent place  in  Paris  from  the  other  the- 
atres, the  museums,  the  art  galleries,  or  the 
schools.  It  is  a  imtsce  parlant,  a  living  history 
of  French  esprit,  French  manners,  and  the 
French  conception  of  life  for  over  two  hun- 
dred years.  People  go  there  to  be  amused  and 
are  amused,  and  unconsciously  they  come 
away  refreshed  and  stimulated  by  the  emotions 
that  have  been  aroused  by  the  fine  and  lofty 
thought  whose  spell  they  have  been  under,  ex- 
pressed with  so  much  suppleness  and  brilliancy 
in  the  beautiful  old  tongue  spoken  in  the 
fifteenth  century  by  Racine,  Corneille  and 
Moliere.  Far  more  than  the  Parisians  them- 
selves imagine,  especially  in  respect  to  the 
lower  classes,  I  am  satisfied  that  it  is  to  this 
theatre,  which  is  not  only  a  museum  of  classic 
literature  and  an  ever-open  history,  but  is  at 
the  same  time  a  school  of  manners  and  taste, 
that  they  owe  the  superiority  in  certain  direc- 
tions they  have  kept  for  so  long.  All  the  Paris- 
ians certainly  do  not  go  even  once  a  year  to 
the  Franqais,  but  enough  do  go  of  all  classes 
to  make  the  great  masters  of  drama,  who  in 
other  days  were  at  the  same  time  the  great 


THE  COMEDIE  FRANC AISE.  41 

masters  of  thought  and  of  the  art  of  speaking 
well,  real  and  popular  with  everyone. 

Happy  the  people  who  have  the  means  for 
getting  such  a  national  education.  Some  of 
them  might  prefer  the  happiness  apostrophized 
by  Voltaire:  "Happy  the  people  whose  annals 
are  tiresome;"  and  I  am  not  sure  that  the  Re- 
publican Government  in  its  entirety  altogether 
appreciates  its  singular  good  fortune  in  this 
respect.  Xo  doubt,  when  it  comes  time  to  vote 
the  annual  appropriations  some  of  the  Social- 
ist deputies  grumble  over  that  240.000  francs 
to  the  Comedie  Francaise,  which  is  the  only 
way  of  assuring  the  official  existence  of  the 
theatre  and  giving  to  the  State  the  right  to  see 
that  the  old  repertory  is  played  so  many  times 
every  week.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  no  public  ex- 
penditure is  less  of  a  luxury  or  more  impor- 
tant, and  this  must  have  been  the  opinion  of 
that  great  intelligence,  Napoleon,  when  he 
sent  back  from  the  depths  of  Russia  the  laws 
which  still  nominally  regulate  the  Frangais 
under  the  celebrated  name  of  the  "Decree  of 
Moscow." 

What  actually  governs  it,  however,  is  a  mass 
of  traditions  and  precedents.  "It  is  like  an  old 
house,"  M.  Francisque  Sarcey  said  to  me  once 
in  talking  about  it,  "which  holds  together,  no- 
body knows  how.  Put  in  one  wedge  and 
the  whole  thing  will  go  to  pieces.  The  di- 
rector and  the  actors  and  evervbodv  are  al- 


42  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

ways  differing  and  quarreling;  but  they  always 
end  by  some  sort  of  a  compromise,  and  the 
theatre  goes  on,  no  one  knows  how.  Nothing 
of  the  kind  could  ever  be  set  up  nowadays.  To 
have  anything  like  it  you  would  have  to  lay 
the  foundation,  and  then  be  willing  to  wait  two 
hundred  years  for  the  result.  And  then,  you 
see,  the  theatre  and  the  Constitution  developed 
simultaneously." 

What  an  old,  old  thing  the  drama  seems,  to 
be  sure,  the  first  time  you  go  there!  You  feel 
as  though  the  Greek  plays,  like  Antigone  or 
CEdipus,  had  simply  been  going  on  for  three 
thousand  years.  As  I  enter  under  its  dusky 
dome  I  always  feel  as  though  I  was  entering 
into  the  presence  of  the  drama,  something 
visible  and  palpable.  Madame  Alphonse  Dau- 
det,  in  "The  Childhood  of  a  Parisian,"  tells 
how,  when  she  was  a  little  girl,  she  used  to  see 
la  gloirc.  It  was  in  the  person  of  a  thin,  slight 
old  man,  a  general,  who  sat  by  the  fireside  and 
so  talked  of  his  battles  and  the  glory  of  them, 
and  so  personified  this  by  his  personality,  that 
to  the  child  he  was  la  gloirc.  At  any  rate,  the 
Fran(;ais  makes  the  drama  splendid  through 
all  the  art  treasures  which  its  evolution  had 
comprised.  You  see  that  the  works  of  the  great 
artists  of  all  the  ages  give  it  dignity,  even  in 
its  smallest  details.  Look,  for  instance,  at  the 
collection  of  walking  sticks  for  the  grand 
seigneurs  and  the  pctits  marquis  of  the  time  of 


THE  COMEDIE  FRANC AISE.  43 

Moliere,  dating  from  his  day,  with  their  han- 
dles of  gold,  wrought  with  art  by  the  best  or- 
fcvres  of  the  day,  and  encrusted  with  precious 
stones.  Here  is  one  of  the  first  specimens  of 
piano-making,  in  one  corner  of  the  greenroom. 
It  is  an  old  spinet,  signed:  "Sebastian  Erard 
et  Frere.  Couipag.  Privilcgicc  dii  Roi.  Rue 
du  Mail  No.  2/  a  Paris,  i/QO."  It  was  a  speci- 
men for  a  museum,  and  for  nearly  a  century 
it  had  served  in  "The  Barber  of  Seville." 

Even  the  bells  of  the  theatre  are  celebrated. 
It  was  one  of  them  which  actually  tolled  out 
the  signal  for  the  Massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew 
from  the  belfry  of  St.  Germain  I'Auxerrois.  Jo- 
seph Chenier  secured  it  for  the  Franqais,  and  it 
is  now  used  to  give  the  signal  for  the  massacre 
in  the  play  of  Charles  IX. 

The  store-rooms  of  the  old  theatre,  the  one 
that  was  burned,  could  not  contain  its  won- 
derful collection  of  beautiful  Louis  XIV.  and 
Louis  XVI.  and  Empire  furniture,  all  perfect 
specimens  of  the  very  purest  style,  dating 
from  the  epoch,  or  the  specimens  of  old  fur- 
niture of  all  the  styles;  and  they  overflowed 
with  marvellous  tapestries  and  embroideries, 
with  old  mirrors,  silver  service,  bronzes,  clocks, 
candelabra,  lamps.  The  Frangais  had  the  finest 
arsenal  in  the  world.  Even  the  things  in  what 
is  called  "the  small  property  room"  would 
have  done  credit  to  a  museum.  The  flower- 
pots, feather  dusters,  tragic  and  comic  masks, 


44  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

inkstands  and  other  writing  materials,  all  the 
thousand  and  one  little  things  required  in  a 
play,  were  antiques,  and  each  had  its  history. 

The  old  Frangais  was  crammed  with  art 
treasures,  most  of  which  were  saved.  The 
green-room  and  the  public  foyer  were  gal- 
leries in  which  you  found  specimens  of 
all  the  best  artists  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury. The  vaulted  vestibule  was  peopled  with 
statues,  the  staircase  was  lined  with  marble 
caryatides;  in  front  of  each  of  the  fluted  pilas- 
ters that  separated  the  panels  of  the  foyer  was 
a  pedestal  holding  a  bust  signed  by  a  cele- 
brated name  like  Houdon,  or  Caffieri.  In 
every  passage  and  every  room  of  the  house 
there  are  pictures,  busts,  engravings,  and  a 
wealth  of  historical  souvenirs. 

Long  familiarity  with  the  Francais  led 
you  to  mingle  a  certain  discriminating  reserve 
with  the  first  burst  of  awed  admiration  with 
which  you  viewed  many  of  these  treasures.  I 
could  not  admire  the  vestibule,  with  its  Doric 
columns,  nor  the  two  great  statues  of  Tragedy 
and  Comedy  which  adorned  it,  all  made  in  the 
Second  Empire,  that  odious  epoch  of  art  when 
nobody  could  think  of  any  other  way  of  repre- 
senting antiquity  than  by  a  female  figure  wear- 
ing bandeaux  of  hair  and  a  chignon.  Then, 
too,  the  great  fireplace  in  the  public  foyer  was 
'"pompier" — to  use  that  invaluable  slang  word 
from  the  Paris  studios  used  to  characterize  art 


c  .5? 


THE  COMEDIE  FRA\KAISE.  45 

which  suggests  the  Second  Empire  pictures  in 
which  the  men  wore  helmets  like  those  of  the 
Paris  "pompiers,"  or  firemen — and  the  ceiling 
by  Dubufe  iils,  a  painter  as  uninteresting  as 
he  is  fecund,  made  you  think  more  than  any- 
thing else  of  the  salon  of  an  enriched  bour- 
geois. But  the  statue  of  Voltaire,  in  the  place 
of  honor  at  the  end,  was  regarded  one  of 
the  finest  statues  that  Houdon  ever  made. 
And  could  anything  be  more  lovely  than  some 
of  the  busts  on  the  pedestals  between  the  fluted 
columns,  all  of  which  were  saved?  The  Caf- 
fieris  alone  are  some  of  the  most  perfect  gems 
of  sculpture  in  existence.  These  are  the 
things  that  make  you  appreciate  the  wonder- 
ful treasures  the  Comedie  possesses. 

You  might  almost  have  taken  for  a  curio 
the  little  man  on  the  landing  standing  on 
watch  over  a  door,  as  ugly  as  a  gnome,  and  so 
old  that  he  seemed  to  date  from  the  creation 
of  the  house.  He  wore  round  his  neck  a 
silver  chain,  like  his  colleagues  in  the  anti- 
chamber  of  a  Ministry,  and,  like  them,  he  is 
a  functionary  and  there  for  life. 

On  the  other  side  of  him  was  the  mysteri- 
ous and  enchanted  world  of  the  artists,  for  the 
drama  still  inhabited  this  old  museum,  and 
human  beings  at  stated  intervals  moved  and 
walked  and  talked  just  as  human  beings 
moved  and  walked  over  two  hundred  years 
ago,     and     they     said     the     same     words. 


46  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

How  could  any  actors  ever  live  up  to 
the  place,  and  what  is  more,  keep  it  alive?  The 
Comedie  Frangais  still  gives  the  most  gener- 
ally satisfactory  entertainment  in  the  world,  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  you  no  longer  go 
there  to  hear  the  most  remarkable  actors 
in  Paris,  and  you  rarely  find  there  the  best 
of  the  new  plays.  Nevertheless,  the  old  house 
was  packed  every  night  of  the  year,  both  win- 
ter and  summer.  That,  too,  in  spite  of  the 
loss  of  so  many  great  names;  in  spite 
of  the  death  of  Regnier,  the  retirement 
of  Got  and  Le  Febvre,  the  defection  of  Coque- 
lin  and  Sarah  Bernhardt  with  their  new 
theatres — Coquelin  with  the  phenomenal  suc- 
cess of  "Cyrano"  at  the  Porte  St.  Martin — of 
the  retirement  of  Madeleine  Brohan  and 
Reichemberg. 

But  the  value  of  the  individual  actor  is  of 
small  importance  at  the  Comedie.  Only  the 
pupils  who  graduate  with  the  highest  honors 
from  the  Conservatoire  are  allowed  to  make  a 
debut  there,  and  all  of  these  have  been  so 
trained  that  they  are  prepared  to  fit  into  the 
general  harmony.  The  troupe  is,  and  always 
will  be,  remarkably  homogeneous  in  the  roles 
of  the  ancient  repertoire.  It  is  sufficient  for 
this  that  each  member  take  care  to  respect  the 
tradition  which  has  been  handed  down  without 
interruption  from  the  time  when  the  authors 
themselves  lived;  and  whether  he  or  she  be 


THE  COMEDIE  FRANC AISE.  47 

more  or  less  brilliant  is  a  matter  of  small  im- 
portance to  the  public  who  goes  to  listen  to 
Tartuffe,  les  Fourberies  de  Scapin,  Andro- 
maque,  or  the  Cid.  It  is  even  a  drawback  to 
the  general  excellence  to  find  an  actor  who  as- 
serts his  individuality  at  the  expense  of  the  en- 
semble. "M.  Mounet-Sully,  a  little  less  genius, 
if  you  please,"  Emile  Augier  said  one  day  at  a 
rehearsal.  What  we  particularly  notice  there 
is  the  way  the  geniuses  play  down  to  the  medi- 
ocrities. 

All  this  in  no  way  diminishes  the  individual 
value  of  the  troupe.  But,  now  that  there  are 
so  many  theatres  in  Paris,  the  fifty-two  actors 
of  the  Comedie  do  not  make  up  the  half  of 
those  who  are  favorites  with  the  public,  and  I 
am  not  at  all  sure  that  even  its  greatest  stars 
would  shine  with  the  same  brilliancy  in  a  less 
aristocratic  house,  where  the  aim  was  more 
to  find  something  new  than  to  preserve  old  tra- 
ditions. Lebargy,  the  jcnnc  premier,  famous 
for  his  cravats  and  his  chic,  the  man  who  set 
whole  torrents  of  printer's  ink  flowing  simply 
with  the  menace  to  resign  his  position,  would 
have  somewhat  of  a  disillusioning,  I  fear,  if  he 
left  and  tried  to  dispute  with  Guitry  the  only 
place  at  all  adapted  to  him,  at  the  Vaudeville. 
Lebargy  is  made  for  the  correct  Lavedan  of 
Catherine,  or  the  serious  Donnay  of  Le  Torrent, 
plays  written  by  men  with  visions  of  the  Acad- 
emy in  the  distance.     He  would  lack  entirely 


48  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

the  fougue,  the  audacity  and  the  passion  which 
Guitry  put  into  the  Donnay  of  Les  Arnantsdind 
I'Awourciises,  or  the  Lavedan  of  Lcs  Viveurs. 
That  Guitry  is  going  to  the  Frangais  as  soon 
as  his  engagement  at  the  Vaudeville  is  fin- 
ished, is  the  most  important  fact  of  this  last 
year  in  the  theatrical  world.  It  is  an  excellent 
thing  for  that  theatre;  less  so,  perhaps,  for 
Guitry. 

Take  some  of  the  other  leading  actors  of  the 
Comedie,  Hernandi  Mounet-Sully,  for  in- 
stance, a  tragedian  of  such  remarkable  power 
in  CEdipe;  but  who  can  imagine  him  trying  to 
take  Antoine's  place  in  Hauptmann's  Les  Tis- 
serands,  or  La  Nouvellc  Idole  by  Curel,  the  only 
pieces  in  which  the  drama  is  of  a  character  suf- 
ficiently elevated  for  him? 

Silvain  is  admirable  in  classic  tragedy,  but 
this  is  only  played  now  in  Paris  at  theFrangais 
or  at  the  Odeon,  which  is  a  sort  of  annex  to 
the  former.  Coquelin  cadet,  and  even  Feraudy, 
would  certainly  not  equal  Baron  and  Brasseur 
in  Lc  Vieux  Marchcur  or  the  La  Dame  dc  chec 
Maxim,  at  the  Nouveaute  or  V^arietes.  And 
certainly,  neither  Bartet  nor  Marsy  nor  Ba- 
retta  could  rival  Rejane,  Sarah  Bernhardt, 
Granier,  or  even  Jane  Hading. 

The  fact  that  the  Comedie  holds  its  own  so 
in  Paris,  I  think,  must  in  one  way  be  a  proof 
that  this  principle  of  general  excellence  is  the 
real  ideal  of  the  theatre.     And  yet,  it  cannot 


THE  COMEDIE  FRANC AISE.  49 

be  the  only  ideal.  All  the  Paris  theatres,  the 
Vaudeville,  the  Gymnase,  the  Varietes.  the 
Palais-Royal,  the  Renaissance,  the  Porte  St. 
Martin,  the  Nouveautes,  the  Theatre  Antoine, 
have  their  reason  for  being  at  a  time  like  this, 
when  literature  principally  takes  the  form  of 
the  novel,  and  when  dramatic  art,  secondary 
for  the  moment,  is  constantly  seeking  under 
the  form  of  naturalist  plays,  psychological 
plays,  plays  with  a  purpose,  satirical  plays,  so- 
cialistic plays,  some  final  and  definite  form. 
The  Comedie  Frangaise  will  always  be  inferi- 
or in  this  sort  of  research,  where  each  style 
monopolizes  a  genre.  It  can  only  accept  tim- 
idly a  novelty,  for  it  has  the  responsibility  of 
fixing  what  shall  become  classic — as  the  fam- 
ous dictionary  of  the  Academicians  decides 
what  words  shall  pass  into  and  become  part 
of  the  language. 

It  is  not  from  this  stage  that  will  come  the 
Renaissance  of  French  dramatic  art.  But  it 
remains  the  most  splendid  personification  of 
dramatic  art  that  can  be  imagined.  La  lit- 
terature  hahillee  promenading  about  Paris  in 
the  person  of  an  academician  has  something 
ridiculously  incongruous  about  it,  but  how  the 
drama  lends  itself  to  the  part!  You  should  see 
Delaunay  walking  across  the  St.  Lazare  rail- 
way station,  on  his  way  to  his  home  at  Ver- 
sailles. All  his  life  he  has  been  a  "jeune 
premier,"  and  now,  though  he  is  over  seventy 


5° 


PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 


years  old  and  retired,  he  still  keeps  on  playing 
his  favorite  role,  with  his  white  hair  as  care- 
fully dressed  as  though  it  were  powdered,  his 
chest  thrown  out  and  limb  straightened,  he  is 
not  exactly  the  Perdican  or  the  Fortunio 
of  Alfred  de  Musset,  which  once  upon  a  time 
bored  so  many  pretty  women,  but  the  gallant 
marechal  de  Richelieu  of  x\lexandre  Dumas 
pere,  who  only  eight  years  ago  still  climbed 
lightly  over  the  balcony  of  Mile,  de  Belle  Isle. 
Such  he  is  for  those  who  meet  him,  and  such 
he  is  for  himself.  In  a  room  in  his  house  he 
has  hung  all  the  costumes  which  he  rendered 
illustrious;  the  brilliant  dcfroqucs  of  the  mar- 
quises of  Moliere,  and  he  regrets  not  to  have 
been  able  to  die  in  one  of  these,  like  Moliere 
in  the  robe  de  chambre  of  the  Malade  Imag- 
inairc,  on  the  field  of  honor. 

And  the  charming  and  witty  Madeleine  de 
Brohan,  who  left  the  stage  in  the  very  height 
of  her  reputation.  She  gave  up  playing  the 
roles  of  young  girls  one  day  when  in,  I  don't 
remember  which  play,  the  words,  "Ernestine, 
I  love  you,"  said  to  her  brusquely,  shocked  her 
like  an  anachronism;  and  an  incident  of  the 
same  sort  decided  her  to  give  up  playing  alto- 
gether. Those  who  see  her  intimately  in  her 
little  apartment  in  the  Rue  de  Rivoli,  looking 
over  the  garden  of  the  Tuileries,  say  that  she 
is  still  the  Madeleine  Brohan  of  the  old  days, 
with  her  heart  always  in  her  theatre;  and  she 


THE  COMEDIE  FRANCAISE.  51 

is  even  to  be  found  sitting  in  the  same  position 
that  she  always  took  in  the  foyer  of  the  Come- 
die,  with  her  work-box  on  a  chair,  whose  back 
formed  a  sort  of  rampart  before  her,  as  though 
to  keep  off  bores.  Her  god-child,  Reichem- 
berg,  the  "petite  doyenne,"  has  followed  her 
example,  and  only  a  year  or  two  ago,  in  '98,  re- 
tired also.  Another  Parisian  event  is  the  re- 
tirement of  a  societaire.  That  night  he  or  she 
owns  the  theatre,  arranges  the  programme 
as  they  please,  sell  the  seats  at. any  price  they 
wish.  For  Reichemberg's  soiree  d'adieu,  Duse 
came  on  from  Bologna  to  play  the  last  act  of 
Adrienne  Lecouvreur,  and  as  distinctly  a 
Parisian  sight  as  could  be  imagined  was  the 
little  doyenne's  loge  that  night;  the  loge 
which  was  once  Rachel's,  with  Mile. 
Reichemberg  in  the  little  gray  dress  and 
white  guimpe  she  had  worn  as  Agnes,  in  the 
midst  of  her  lilacs,  her  camelias,  her  orchids, 
her  ribbons,  her  gilded  baskets,  seemed,  as  M. 
Claretie  put  it,  like  the  corolla  of  some  gigantic 
flower  herself. 

The  societaries  of  the  Franqais,  when  they 
retire,  are  always  sure  not  only  of  a  little  in- 
come, but  a  little  capital,  for  only  half  their 
share  in  the  profits  of  the  theatre  is  paid  to 
them  each  year.  The  rest  is  invested,  and  given 
them  on  their  retirement.  The  singers  of  the 
Opera  retire  in  the  same  way,  and,  oddly 
enough,  while  they  have  a  special  fancy  for 


52  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

the  real  country,  like  Bois-Colombes,  the 
actors  always  choose  either  Versailles  or  even 
Neuilly  or  Asnieres.  Evidently  they  are  so  ac- 
customed to  country  scenes  of  painted  canvas 
that  villas  and  paved  streets  of  the  environ- 
ments of  Paris  give  them  sufficiently  the  il- 
lusion of  country.  And  then,  they  love  the 
crowd,  and  can  never  bear  to  be  shut  ofi  from 
it,  or  far  away  from  that  theatre  which  during 
all  the  best  years  of  their  life  was  the  scene  of 
their  struggles  and  their  successes.  I  think 
the  actors  of  the  Franqais  keep  the  old  pres- 
tige more  than  even  rank  and  title  nowadays. 
The  foyer  of  the  Frangais  has  always  been 
one  of  the  most  brilliant  salons  in  France. 
One  great  actress  after  another  has  held  her 
court  there  like  a  sovereign.  Kings,  princes, 
dukes,  generals,  all  that  the  world  counts 
most  distinguished  in  politics,  art  or  letters, 
have  filed  through  it.  It  has  seen  the  ovations 
made  to  great  dramatists  after  their  wonderful 
successes — has  seen  Victor  Hugo  acclaimed, 
and  Alexandre  Dumas  fils  with  the  tears  roll- 
ing down  his  cheeks  in  the  midst  of  the  wald 
enthusiasm  of  the  first  nights  of  Dcnisc  and 
Francillon.  Times  have  changed.  The  eti- 
quette which  once  ruled  the  foyer  is  one  of  the 
things  that  has  disappeared.  In  the  old  days, 
while  you  saw  the  actresses  comfortably  settled 
with  their  crochet  or  their  tapestry,  waiting 
till  the  rcgisscur  should  come  to  tell  Camille 


THE  COMEDIE  FRANC AISE.  53 

that  Horace  was  ready  to  give  her  the  fatal 
stroke  of  the  sword,  or  CeHmene  that  the  Mis- 
anthrope waited,  to  tell  her  that  her  co- 
quetry had  determined  him  to  leave  the  world, 
no  visitor  could  appear  but  in  a  dress  suit. 
Lately  one  of  my  friends  tells  me  that  he  has 
seen  a  bicyclist  in  the  foyer. 

The  conversation  is  no  less  brilliant,  how- 
ever; it  is  the  light  banter  and  witty  repartee  of 
people  accustomed  to  the  theatre  and  its  mots 
a  eifet.  Here  are  a  few  bits  which  have  come 
to  me  from  time  to  time — women  do  not  go 
to  the  foyer — trivialities,  but  specimens  of  that 
sort  of  quick  French  repartee,  which  is  so  pe- 
culiarly French: 

"Mme.  X.,  I  hear,  is  giving  a  large  dinner 
this  evening?" 

"Yes;  I  saw  the  oysters  going  in  under  the 
door  as  I  came  by." 

"What,  leaving  already?" 

"Yes;  I  promised  to  go  to  supper  with 
Sarah." 

"Oh,  yes,  that's  so;  it  is  Friday;  vous  faitcs 
maigrc." 

"Just  fancy,  my  dear,  Chevet  asked  me  ten 
francs  for  a  bottc  (bunch — boot)  of  aspara- 
gus!" 


"Was  it  wearing  then  a  golden  spur?" 


54  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

"Mile.  Chose  is  very  hoarse  to-night.  The 
public  scarcely  applauded  her  at  all." 

"C  a'  nest  pas  juste;  elk  a  la  voix  du  peupleJ" 

*  *     *     * 

"Y.  toiichc  a  la  caissc  qninsc  milk  francs 
pour  son  lever  du  rideau.'' 

"On  a  en  tort  de  lid  donner  tant  de  monnaie 
pour  line  mauvaise  piece!" 

*  *     *     * 

Mile.  Z.,  coming  from  her  loge:  "Just  fancy! 
Mme.  W.  insisted  on  coming  into  my  loge. 
She  cried,  'Ouzrea,  ouvrcc  moi  done!'  "  "And 
then?"  "And  then  I  answered,  'Do  you  take 
me  for  an  oyster  opener?'  " 

In  another  part  of  the  foyer  Silvain  talks  of 
his  birds,  Mounet-Sully  of  his  bicyclette, 
Rachel  Boyer  of  her  automobile,  Trufifier  of  his 
writing — all  these  princes  of  the  Comedie  and 
all  of  these  great  amoureuses  of  the  drama  are 
after  all,  bons  bourgeois. 


Fi^ench  Homes, 

It  is  not  an  easy  thing  to  generalize  about 
homes  anywhere,  but  one  general  statement 
can  certainly  be  made  of  those  in  France; 
they  are  what  the  foreigner  knows  the  least 
about  of  anything  in  the  country.  The  French 
have  a  great  love  for  home,  even  though,  as  we 
are  fond  of  saying,  they  have  no  such  word  in 
their  language.  "Foyer"  replaces  it.  but  you 
never  hear  them  talk  familiarly  about  their 
foyers.  They  say,  '7r  vais  a  la  maison' — "I 
am  going  to  the  house,"  and  they  speak  of 
their  "interiors,"  but  neither  of  these  expres- 
sions is  the  equivalent  of  our  word  home. 

I  always  think  perhaps  they  have  no  satis- 
factory word  for  it  because  no  one  word  could 
ever  express  all  the  conditions  which  the  idea 
must  contain  to  them.  They  seem  to  put  into 
it  some  of  the  literal  feeling  that  an  old  col- 
ored mammy  I  once  knew  had  when  she  found 
out  what  1-o-v-e  spelled.  "Mighty  poah  way  to 
spell  love,'cordin's  I  knows  it," she  said;  "on'y 
just  foah  letters!"  The  English  idea  of  home 
is  an  abstraction,  and  almost  any  symbol  would 
express  it.  They  can  take  out  a  tea  kettle  at 
five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  in  any  spot  of  the 
55 


56  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

globe  where  they  may  happen  to  be,  and  as 
they  watch  the  steam  mount  from  this  emblem 
of  their  altars  and  their  fires,  it  is  a  little  Britain 
and  it  is  home.  But  home  to  the  French  is 
something  concrete  and  material.  It  is  some 
particular  spot  in  some  particular  house,  in 
which  are  installed  the  exact  traditions  at- 
tached to  their  idea  of  their  own  partic- 
ular family.  They  are  devoted  to  this.  They 
never  want  to  leave  it,  and  when  they  go  away 
in  the  summer  it  is  always  to  set  up  somewhere 
just  such  another  home,  exactly  like  the  one 
they  have  left.  You  rarely  find  the  best  French 
people  in  hotels  or  boarding-houses.  The  re- 
sponsibility of  keeping  up  these  particular  tra- 
ditions is  probably  one  reason  why  they  put  a 
little  sort  of  Chinese  wall  around  their  interiors, 
within  which  the  foreigner  is  rarely  invited. 
These  homes  must  not  be  modified  nor  dis- 
turbed by  the  profane  touch. 

This  explains  the  fact  that  we  know  so  little 
about  French  life.  Paris  is  a  city  within 
a  city,  one  of  which  is  real  and  the 
other  artificial.  Its  show  places,  its  show 
dressmakers,  half  its  life,  exist  only  for 
the  stranger.  Its  Tout-Paris  is  nothing  but 
a  heterogeneous  collection  of  the  smart  sets 
of  all  countries  and  all  nations,  who  make  up 
an  artificial  and  cosmopolitan  society  like  that 
of  any  great  capital,  and  therefore  as  little  typ- 
ical of  their  ow^n.   But  these  are  the  only  peo- 


FRENCH    HOMES.  57 

pie  we  ever  hear  about.  Realistic  novelists 
have  to  go  to  them  for  their  situations,  and  it 
is  only  from  them  that  journalists  can  get  their 
sensations.  This  is  by  no  means  peculiar  to 
Paris,  but  there  is  this  difference  between  it 
and  London  or  Xew  York.  Any  extravagant 
thing  we  read  of  in  these  other  places  falls 
upon  a  background  made  up  of  our  exact 
knowledge  of  what  the  country  really  is,  and 
so  we  immediately  give  it  its  proper  value; 
while  in  France  we  know  so  little  about  the 
best  types  of  people  that  nothing  has  its  real 
perspective. 

Almost  all  the  writers  who  have  made  any 
study  of  French  life  speak  of  this ;  men  like  Mr. 
Hamerton,  Mr.  Brownell,  Mr.  Theodore  Child. 
One  thing  that  Mr.  Child  wrote  about  the  false 
values  given  to  facts  by  newspapers  constantly 
comes  back  to  me.  Their  readers,  he  said,  did 
not  remember  that  a  journalist  valued  a  fact 
not  by  virtue  of  its  importance,  but  of  its  nov- 
elty. From  year's  end  to  year's  end  a  million 
and  a  half  of  people  worked  in  Paris  ten  to 
twelve  hours  a  day;  an  important  fact,  but  not 
new.  and  so  the  newspapers  did  not  mention  it. 
A  score  of  politicians  met  and  drew  up  a  crazy 
manifesto,  and  immediately  the  fact, being  new, 
was  telegraphed  to  the  ends  of  the  earth.  Then 
when  the  man  who  read  the  newspapers  came 
to  Paris  and  got  more  exact  notions  of  reality 
he  made  himself  conversationallv  tiresome  and 


S8  PARIS  AS   IT  IS. 

impaired  his  digestion  in  marveling  at  the 
calmness  of  the  population,  the  activity  of  busi- 
ness of  all  kinds,  and  the  prosperity  of  the  city 
in  general. 

During  the  ten  or  twelve  years  that  I  have 
known  the  French  capital  I  have  never  seen  it 
anything  but  calm,  active  and  prosperous;  but 
every  now  and  then  a  letter,  or  sometimes  a  ca- 
ble from  an  interested  family,  begging  me  to 
go  into  the  streets  with  precaution  and  to  take 
no  unnecessary  risks,  tells  me  that  somebody 
in  some  obscure  part  of  the  town  has  again 
been  drawing  up  a  crazy  manifesto,  and  that  to 
the  other  side  of  the  water  we  are,  as  usual,  on 
the  verge  of  a  revolution.  When  the  other  side 
brings  its  preconceived  ideas  of  French  life 
over,  it  seldom  gets  an  opportunity  for  compar- 
ing them  with  any  object-lessons,  and  there- 
fore they  never  change.  They  seldom  meet 
French  familias  of  their  own  class  in  America, 
and  even  if  they  did,  it  would  be  difficult  for 
them  to  know  much  about  the  ideas  and 
standards  of  its  members,  since  they  could  not 
carry  on  for  fifteen  minutes  a  general  conver- 
sation in  any  language  common  to  all. 

The  fact  is,  that  while  everything  we  hear 
about  Paris  is  true,  it  is  only  part  of  the  truth. 
The  typical  life  of  France  is  in  its  bourgeoisie, 
and  this  the  outsider  seldom  reads  about,  and 
still  less  meets. 

I  am  afraid  that  the  word  does  not  sound 


FRENCH    HOMES.  59 

interesting,  but  the  bourgeoisie  is  of  two 
kinds,  the  petite  and  the  haute.  The  "petite 
bourgeoisie,"  is  made  up  of  the  mass  of 
worthy  but  uninteresting  famiHes,  shop- 
keepers, modest  functionaries,  people  living 
on  tiny  incomes,  who  lead  a  pot-au-feu  ex- 
istence bounded  by  their  own  little  interests. 
They  take  no  part  in  any  intellectual  move- 
ment, and  their  sole  ambition  is  to  put  by  a  lit- 
tle money  each  year  for  their  children.  They 
are,  nevertheless,  the  economic  force  of  France. 
It  is  from  them  that  the  country  got  in  a  few 
days  twelve  times  the  five  milliards  demanded 
by  Germany  as  indemnity  of  war. 

The  "haute  bourgeoisie,"  on  the  other  hand, 
includes  the  intellectual  class  of  France;  those 
families  who  consider  a  classical  education  the 
most  necessary  of  possessions,  and  think  it  a 
duty  to  take  an  interest  in  every  intellectual 
movement — in  art,  science  and  letters.  You 
find  in  it  the  professors,  the  artists,  the  writers, 
the  physicians,  the  engineers,  every  class  in 
which  personal  value  ranks  above  either  name 
or  fortune.  The  haute  bourgeoisie  Franqaise 
is  the  moral  force  of  the  nation;  the  haute 
bourgeoisie  Parisienne  is  to-day  the  real  aris- 
tocracy of  the  Republic.  It  does  not,  however, 
strictly  speaking,  mean  a  class.  It  means  peo- 
ple having  a  certain  common  etat  d'esprit;  a 
certain  common  view  and  conduct  of  life,  A 
noble  may  be  a  bourgeois,  and  often  is. 


6o  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

I  do  not  know  how  I  can  better  illustrate 
this  than  by  describing  two  families  among  my 
French  friends  whom  I  have  known  intimately 
for  a  long  time,  who  seem  to  me,  each  in  their 
way,  typical  of  the  haute  bourgeoisie  and  of  its 
finest  characteristics.  One  is  the  family  of  a 
professor.  The  husband  is  a  self-made  man, 
the  grandson  of  a  simple  mason,  who  has  made 
his  position  entirely  by  his  brains.  He  grad- 
uated with  high  honors  from  the  Ecole  Xor- 
male  Superieure,  a  special  college  in  Paris  for 
professors,  in  which  only  twenty-five  pupils 
are  admitted  a  year.  Then  he  spent  three  years 
at  the  French  school  for  the  preparation  of 
high  professors  at  Rome,  and  almost  immedi- 
ately after  finishing  there  was  appointed  "pro- 
fessor of  the  Faculty."  That  is  to  say,  through 
public  lectures  he  prepares  high  instructors  in 
his  turn.  This  is  the  highest  university  title  in 
France.  It  brings  him  in  from  seven  to  nine 
thousand  francs  a  year.  At  twenty-eight  he 
married  a  charming  girl  without  a  large  dot, 
but  of  a  fine  family,  the  daughter  of  a  dis- 
tinguished public  man.  noted  for  his  breadth 
of  mind  and  high  character. 

Both  these  young  people  knew  when  they 
married  that  their  income  would  never  exceed 
fifteen  thousand  francs  at  the  outside.  This  in 
Paris,  an  expensive  capital,  meant  looking  for- 
ward to  a  life  governed  by  the  strictest  econ- 
omv.      With    the    four    children    that    have 


FRENCH    HOMES.  6i 

come  to  them  in  eleven  years  it  has  turned 
into  a  Hfe  of  privation.  They  have  ac- 
cepted it  gaily,  and  have  as  ideally  happy 
a  home  as  I  knov^  of  anywhere.  What  makes 
it  typical  is  that  all  its  happiness  and  am- 
bition lies  in  intangible  things.  They  live  in  a 
quaint  little  house  with  a  garden  near  the  Pan- 
theon. Of  mornings  the  husband  goes 
off  to  his  lectures,  while  his  wife  keeps  the 
house  with  that  exquisite  economy  which  is 
one  of  the  things  about  France  where  ovir  pre- 
conceived ideas  have  not  played  us  false.  She 
makes  nearly  all  the  children's  clothes  and  her 
own  with  the  aid  of  her  little  housemaid,  and 
directs  the  children's  education  with  that  ex- 
treme care  which  forces  itself  upon  us  as  one 
of  the  most  conspicuous  characteristics  of 
French  home  life.  The  saying  is,  A  French 
mother  knows  every  hour  of  her  daughter's 
life.  A  French  mother  and  father  know  every 
step  of  their  children's  education.  It  is  the 
mother  herself,  in  the  professor's  family,  who 
takes  the  children  to  their  conrs.  All  this 
does  not  prevent  her  from  finding  the  time 
to  go  now  and  then  into  society — de  se 
montrer  dans  le  monde — where  you  see  her 
charmingly  dressed,  in  perfect  taste.  At 
night  husband  and  wife  always  dine  together, 
and  afterward  read  aloud  for  an  hour  or 
so.  Nevertheless,  the  husband  manages  to 
write  for  the  reviews    and    compete    for    the 


62  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

prizes  offered  by  the  Institute,  making  in  this 
way  the  summer  outing — a  house  in  the  Pyre- 
nees— and  a  Httle  sum  put  by  each  year  for  the 
dot  of  the  daughters.  On  Saturday  evenings 
they  are  "at  home."  You  hear  excellent  music 
in  their  little  salon  and  delightful  conversation, 
since  nearly  all  the  people  who  drop  in  to  dis- 
cuss literature,  science  and  art  over  a  tea-table 
belong  to  the  university  world. 

The  other  people  are  artists,  both  husband 
and  wife,  and  from  the  French  standpoint 
have  money.  That  is  to  say,  between  them 
they  have  a  private  income  of  thirty  thou- 
sand francs,  which  will  be  doubled  on  the 
death  of  their  parents,  and  as  much  is 
added  to  it  every  year  by  the  sale  of  the  hus- 
band's pictures.  He  is  one  of  the  most  distin- 
guished of  the  young  painters  of  the  Champs 
de  Mars  salon,  and  an  example  of  that  remark- 
able versatility  which  you  find  so  often  in  cul- 
tivated Frenchmen.  Before  he  began  to  paint 
he  wrote,  and  won  instant  recognition  through 
his  short  stories.  His  wife  also  paints.  She  is 
what  is  called  a  rare  esprit,  a  brilliant  aquarel- 
liste,  who  exhibits  every  year  in  the  Champs 
de  Mars,  and  an  excellent  musician. 

What  makes  this  family  typical  is  that,  with 
money,  they  choose  to  adopt  a  standard  of  life 
whose  aims  lie  in  intangible  things  just  as  much 
as  the  professor  and  his  wife,  whose  means  are 
so  limited.    The  wife,  who  could  give  over  to 


FRENCH   HOMES.  63 

others  much  of  the  care  of  the  house  and  the 
education  of  the  children,  chooses  to  look  after 
both  in  precisely  the  same  way  as  in  the  other 
home.  Both  she  and  her  husband,  who  could 
live  lives  of  leisure,  give  themselves  up  to  the 
most  unremitting  work.  His  ambition  is  to 
create  art;  to  hand  down  the  artistic  inheri- 
tance he  has  received,  and  add  to  it  something 
of  his  own.  So  he  works  unceasingly,  and  his 
wife  is  his  invaluable,  if  silent,  partner.  Never 
a  picture  is  sketched  on  the  canvas  that  has  not 
been  thoroughly  discussed  with  her.  It  is  she, 
too,  who  is  her  husband's  inspiration,  who 
gives  him  courage  in  the  moments  of  discour- 
agement which  come  to  every  artist.  Their 
luxuries  are  in  adding  now  and  then  a  fine 
tapestry  or  a  beautiful  piece  of  old  furniture  to 
their  home,  which  is  arranged  with  exquisite 
taste,  and  in  taking  every  year  a  summer  trip 
before  they  settle  down  to  the  old  house  in 
Brittany  from  which  the  husband  has  got  so 
many  of  his  best  subjects. 

It  is  easy  to  see  from  these  two  examples  the 
underlying  principles  upon  which  the  bour- 
geoisie is  based.  I  know  many  individual  in- 
stances like  them  in  America,  but  I  do  not 
know  of  any  whole  class  of  people  all  having 
a  similar  standard  and  manner  of  life.  You 
can  sum  up  the  distinguishing  characteristics 
of  the  best  French  families  in  one  sentence, 
which  will  apply  to  all.     This  is  a  common 


64  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

and  exactly  defined  conception,  which  has 
been  handed  down  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion, of  duty;  to  work,  to  Hve  within  your  in- 
come without  touching  the  capital,  to  put  by 
something  every  year  for  your  children,  to 
watch  personally  over  their  manners  and  de- 
velopment, and  to  give  them  the  finest  pos- 
sible education.  This  is  what  makes  a  family, 
according  to  the  French  idea.  And  these  peo- 
ple make  up  the  real  France.  Her  economic 
wealth  does  not  come  so  much  from  individual 
fortunes  as  from  the  small  economies  of  the 
masses,  and  so  her  great  artistic,  scientific  and 
literary  movement  is  not  carried  on  so  much 
by  the  talent  of  single  individuals  as  by  the  vast 
accumulation  of  methodical  and  often  ob- 
scure efforts  which  keep  the  intellectual  at- 
mosphere so  overcharged  that  every  now  and 
then  flashes  from  it  a  luminous  spark  known 
by  some  such  name  as  Pasteur,  Puvis  de  Cha- 
vannes,  Renan,  Guy  de  Maupassant.  All 
these  men  were  bourgeois,  sons  of  bourgeois. 
direct  descendants  of  that  Tiers  foat  which 
made  the  French  revolution. 

It  is  this  very  bourgeoisie  which  is  so 
much  attacked  at  present,  both  from  within  and 
without;  and  I  am  aware  that  a  society  whose 
finest  expression  tends  towards  the  obscure 
efforts  of  the  masses  rather  than  to  the  brilHant 
initiative  of  individuals  is  slenderly  equipped 
for  keeping  its  material  preeminence   in  the 


Cozy    Corner    in    a    French    Home. 


A    French    Home. 


FRENCH    HOMES.  65 

struggle  for  fame  and  power  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century.  But  from  this  comes  the  atmos- 
phere of  repose  which  is  one  of  the  sources  of 
the  exquisite  charm  of  Paris.  Tlie  entire  city 
is  a  perfected  composition,  all  of  whose  lines 
and  masses  and  tones  contribute  toward  a 
general  ensemble  of  elegance  and  beauty.  And 
all  its  homes  are  finished  and  perfected  in- 
teriors in  which  there  is  a  common  standard 
of  taste  and  life. 

A  home  to  the  French  always  means  a 
"harmony,"  as  they  put  it,  established  with 
certain  pieces  of  furniture,  certain  meithlcs 
around  which  the  rest  is  built.  One  of  my 
French  friends,  who  has  one  foot  in  the  Amer- 
ican colony,  confessed  to  me  that  he  had 
never  found  among  us  an  interior  that  had 
to  him  the  air  of  being  furnished.  "They  all 
seem  to  me  like  encampments,"  he  said. 
"So  many  little  things  set  about!"  These 
ordered  homes  that  look  as  though  they 
might  have  stood  from  all  time,  give  you  a 
sensation  of  exquisite  repose;  mingled  with 
a  constant  fear  of  disturbing  something. 

I  once,  with  a  friend,  spent  a  year  in  a 
French  family  of  distinction  where  they  had 
never  seen  any  Americans.  One  of  its  inmates 
was  a  delightful  old  French  lady  who  was 
gradually  growing  deaf,  and  she  thought  it 
was  because  we  were  Americans  that  she  did 
not  hear.     She  was  a  good  soul  for  whom  we 


66  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

had  much  affection  and  who  responded  to  it 
by  trying  to  "make  our  education,"  as  she 
called  it,  in  a  thousand  ways.  We  had  a  loose, 
irregular  manner  of  cutting  the  cards  when  we 
played  with  her  at  piquet;  we  did  not  like 
cheese,  and  therefore  never  ate  any,  sometimes 
which  she  construed  into  a  lack  in  our  early 
training;  we  did  not  air  our  linen  properly; 
and,  most  serious  thing  of  all,  in  our  accounts 
we  had  a  promiscuous  way  of  lumping  to- 
gether whole  classes  of  things  under  the  gen- 
eral term  "sundries."  "There  always  will  be 
gaps  in  the  American  education,"  she  would 
say.  "It  cannot  be  otherwise."  We  had  the 
estate  of  jeunes  filles,  although  we  had  both 
seen  something  of  the  society  of  three  coun- 
tries, and  as  of  evenings  we  sat  and  sewed 
while  someone  read  aloud,  the  shut-in,  tran- 
quil, secluded  atmosphere,  about  which  there 
always  seemed  to  be  a  faint,  intangible  per- 
fume of  violets,  made  me  feel  as  though  I 
were  a  little  child  again,  sewing  patchwork  at 
my  mother's  knee.  On  the  occasions  when 
we  had  a  soiree,  with  "jeunes  gens,"  I  found 
myself  unconsciously  looking  forward  to 
meeting  men  with  something  of  the  feel- 
ing that  Eve  must  have  had  when  she  con- 
sidered the  apple. 

Let  me  say  in  passing,  that  the  French  still 
keep  up  a  good  deal  everywhere  the  custom 
of   reading-   aloud.      I    once   remarked   to   a 


FRENCH    HOMES.  67 

young  Frenchman  whom  I  knew  upon  the 
extreme  beauty  of  his  diction  in  speaking.  He 
said  it  was  the  result  of  the  habit  they  had  at 
home  of  reading  aloud.  In  the  summer  his 
mother  had  a  former  societaire  of  the  Fran- 
qais  come  down  once  a  week  to  their  chateau 
to  give  the  entire  family  lessons  in  diction. 

French  homes  are  apt  not  to  have  the  ma- 
terial comforts  of  ours.  In  very  good  houses 
the  fire  will  be  lighted  in  the  salon  only  when 
the  company  has  actually  rung  at  the  door, 
or  on  the  days  of  reception.  I  remember 
once  buying  a  palm  at  the  Louvre  and  having 
the  salesman  say  to  me,  when  I  asked  him  if 
he  would  guarantee  it  to  be  in  good  condi- 
tion: "Certainly  it  is  in  good  condition,  but 
this  is  something  that  must  be  taken  into 
account.  Once  a  week,  Madam,  you  will 
make  a  fire  in  your  salon.  The  plant,  which 
is  accustomed  to  the  cold  every  other  day, 
will  naturally  feel  this  sudden  change  to  a 
warm  atmosphere,  and  wilt  momentarily." 
A  man  in  the  Louvre  could  not  imagine  an 
interior  where  there  was  a  fire  in  the  salon 
oftener  than  once  a  week. 

Demoulins  has  given  as  one  of  his  evi- 
dences of  Anglo-Saxon  superiority  the  many 
comforts  we  have  in  our  homes,  and  these 
are  incontestable.  And  yet  as  everything  has 
the  defects  of  its  qualities,  I  cannot  help  feel- 
ing  sometimes    that    our    superior    material 


68  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

standpoint  is  rather  hard  to  Hve  up  to,  espe- 
cially for  women.  As  a  nation,  we  must  be 
constantly  increasing  our  numerators,  in 
whatever  represents  the  unit  of  our  am- 
bitions; money,  position,  cultivation — and 
generally  money — and  it  is  upon  the  women 
that  the  necessity  falls  of  giving  constant  and 
material  proof  of  an  advanced  and  enlight- 
ened state  which  is  always  changing  its 
standards.  Whole  papers  have  to  be  invented 
to  keep  us  informed  from  week  to  week  and 
month  to  month  of  such  things  as  the  latest 
finds  in  etiquette  and  house  decoration,  the 
size  of  visiting  cards,  or  the  most  approved 
kinds  of  kitchen  dishes;  and  our  sense  of  re- 
sponsibility over  our  individual  opinions  on 
art,  literature,  religion  and  other  subjects  is 
something  prodigious. 

Everything  with  us  tends  towards  individ- 
ual initiative,  and  everything  with  the  French 
towards  general  repose;  but  since,  whatever 
we  may  be,  we  are  not  lacking  in  a  sense  of 
humor,  I  know  of  nothing  that  could  gratify 
it  more  than  to  be  present  at  one  of  those 
rare  interviews  where  too  much  of  the 
individual  initiative  of  one  side  of  the  water 
has  crossed  over  to  the  old  world  and  comes 
in  contact  with  too  much  of  the  repose  of  the 
other. 

Once  or  twice  in  my  life  this  privilege  has 


A    Family    Breakfast. 


On  the  Street. 


FRENCH    HOMES.  69 

been  granted  me.  I  recall  the  expression  on 
the  face  of  a  French  wife  of  the  type  of  one  of 
those  in  the  families  I  have  described,  at  the 
answer  of  a  pretty  young  American  woman, 
who  had  come  abroad  alone  for  a  year  to 
study  French  and  art,  when  asked  how  her 
husband  was  going  to  get  along  without  her. 
"Oh,  well — we  didn't  see  so  very  much  of 
each  other  when  I  was  home.  My  husband 
was  away  all  day — and  we  lived  in  a  hotel — 
and  at  night  when  we  didn't  go  out  we  gen- 
erally had  people  in." 

By  far  the  most  satisfying  thing  in  this  line, 
however,  was  a  conversation  between  one  of 
those  French  mothers  who  "know  every  hour 
of  their  daughters'  lives,"  and  whose  family 
represented  the  concentrated  essence  of  the 
French  culture  of  seven  hundred  years,  and 
two  American  girls  of  nineteen  and  twenty- 
one,  respectively,  who  had  come  abroad  alone 
to  "make  original  investigations,"  as  they 
told  us.  It  was  only  one  of  them,  however, 
a  pretty  creature  like  Daisy  Miller,  who 
exposed  her  past  and  present  aspirations  in 
the  follow^ing  monologue,  broken  scarcely 
by  a  single  question  from  her  amazed  listener: 
"I  want  to  know  things  for  myself,"  she 
said.  "Fve  come  over  to  get  everything 
from  the  original  sources.  Fve  got  to  learn 
French  and  German  and  Italian — oh,  Fve  sfot 


70  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

a  mountain  of  work  before  me!  I'm  going  to 
master  French.  I've  given  myself  two 
months  for  it.  Of  course,  that  isn't  very  long, 
but  as  Miss  Jones  and  I  have  the  habit  of 
studying,  I  think  we  can  do  a  great  deal. 
And  Fm  going  to  master  art.  At  present 
I'm  in  a  period  where  I  think  all  art  is  the 
language  of  the  soul.  It's  the  expression  of 
the  soul — but  that's  another  thing  I  w-ant  to 
do.  I  want  to  talk  with  them — the  artists,  I 
mean — and  see  if  that's  really  true.  The 
books  say  it  is,  but  then  they  put  every- 
thing so  beautifully,  don't  you  know.  It 
doesn't  take  a  girl  very  long  to  audit  up  a 
man — do  you  think  it  does — and  as  soon  as 
I  talk  with  them  I  shall  know." 

"What  did  you  think  of  the  salons?"  the 
French  lady  asked,  politely,  as  there  came  a 
momentary  lull. 

"Oh,  we  didn't  go  to  them.  There  were 
nothing  but  modern  pictures  in  them,  and  we 
hadn't  come  to  that  period  yet.  In  French 
art  I've  only  got  as  far  as  David,  and  the  dis- 
tinctly Napoleonic  period.  I  began  with 
Egyptian  art.  I  gave  a  series  of  parlor  talks 
on  it  at  home.  I've  talked  to  more  than  five 
hundred  people.  I  talked  without  remunera- 
tion. Poppa  says  they  ought  to  have  been 
paid  for  listening  to  me.  He  says  I'll  never 
learn  anything  because  I  never  listen,  and  I 
don't  know  but  it's  true.     I've  never  listened 


FRENCH    HOMES.  71 

in  my  life.  I've  always  been  used  to  talking. 
I  have  so  many  aspirations,  and  I  don't  know 
how  they'll  focus!" 

My  French  friend  has  several  times  asked 
me  how  they  did  focus. 


The  Latin   Quarter. 

My  own  Latin  Quarter  comprises  the 
whole  left  bank  of  the  Seine,  indiscriminately, 
and  is  a  confused  mingling  of  souvenirs  of 
Balzac,  Miirger,  Frangois  Villon,  Victor 
Hugo  and  Du  Maurier,  together  with  a  thou- 
sand others  that  I  have  collected  on  my  own 
account.  I  remember  my  first  dejeuner  in  a 
studio  in  the  quartier,  in  the  spring,  in  a  tall 
house  near  the  Pantheon,  which  looked  out 
on  an  old  garden  full  of  the  scent  of  lilacs, 
through  which  veered  yellow  butterflies  and 
dragonflies.  Backed  up  against  it  were  other 
old  houses  with  cream  and  faded  pink  and 
citron-green  walls,  and  on  their  roofs  sat  a 
whole  company  of  chimney  pots,  like  so  many 
gossippy  old  ladies.  At  breakfast  was  a 
young  musical  composer,  who  played  for  us 
afterwards,  amidst  great  enthusiasm,  a  Wag- 
nerian composition  of  his  own  in  which  the 
leitmotivs  were  what  he  called  the  students' 
cries.  To  this  day  I  can  hear  him  saying 
solemnly:  "Here  are  the  students  coming 
in  the  distance!"  I  could  not  find  out  at  the 
time,  nor  have  I  ever  been  able  to  discover 
since,  that  the  students  ever  had  any  such 
72 


THE  LATIN  QUARTER.  73 

cries;  but  as  the  man  of  genius  justly  re- 
marked: "If  they  had  had  any,  they  would 
have  certainly  been  like  those  in  his  piece." 
After  this  come  all  the  Latin  Quarter 
memories  of  that  first  winter  when  I  began 
really  to  live  in  Paris,  and  to  enjoy  things 
with  that  sense  of  possession  which  gives 
them  such  a  particular  interest,  before  their 
freshness  has  become  dulled  by  too  much  fa- 
miliarity. I  remember  my  first  visits  to  the 
Luxembourg  in  the  short  afternoons,  and 
coming  out  at  the  hour  of  closing  into  the 
gardens  to  find  the  statues  shivering  in  the 
winter  twilight,  and  the  lights  glimmering 
just  enough  through  the  mist  to  let  you  dis- 
tinguish the  violets  and  mimosa  in  the  little 
charettes  that  the  women  pushed  along  the 
pavements;  and  then  a  succession  of  impres- 
sions from  strolls  along  the  quays,  a  "mer- 
chant of  fried  potatoes"  standing  in  a  little 
niche  full  of  deep  shadows,  with  her  face 
illuminated  by  the  red  light  of  her  charcoal 
brazier,  which  fell  also  on  the  heap  of  yellow 
crescents  that  she  shook  in  her  strainer  over 
a  kettle  boiling  like  a  witches'  cauldron. 
x\mong  these  souvenirs,  too,  is  one  of  Notre 
Dame — my  quartier  thought  nothing  of  tak- 
ing in  the  Isle  of  the  City — a  heavy  mass 
against  a  pale  evening  sky,  with  a  very  young 
moon  hovering  exactly  over  one  of  its  towers 
like  a  dot  upon  an  i.    She  looked  down  gaily 


74  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

upon  the  world,  I  remember,  and  seemed  al- 
together different  from  the  tranquil  orb  which 
rather  gave  way  to  the  artificial  lights,  on 
my  side  of  the  Seine.  How  could  any 
heavenly  or  other  body,  for  that  matter,  be 
anything  but  gay  who  offered  herself  nightly 
the  spectacle  of  Bohemia?  For  above  every- 
thing else  the  secret  of  the  eternal  charm  of 
the  Quarter  is  the  mysterious  and  intangible 
atmosphere  of  youth,  and  impulse,  and  free- 
dom, and  art  that  belongs  to  the  "vie  de 
Boheme,"  which  touches  with  its  spell  every- 
one who  has  enough  temperament  to  respond 
to  it. 

To  solve  the  problem  of  whether  the  Latin 
Quarter,  or  rather  French  Bohemia,  still  ex- 
ists, you  have  only  to  ask  yourself  what  con- 
stitutes a  country.  Is  it  soil,  or  is  it  the 
assembling  of  a  certain  number  of  individuals, 
subjected  to  the  same  traditions  and  the  same 
laws?  My  own  leaning  is  to  the  latter  theory. 
New  England  will  still  be  New  England,  for 
instance,  for  many  years  to  come,  any  super- 
ficial falling  off  in  the  way  of  pies  at  Thanks- 
giving or  in  brown  bread  and  beans  to  the 
contrary  notwithstanding,  and  so  Bohemia 
on  the  left  bank  of  the  Seine,  in  all  its 
essential  qualities  will  long  go  on,  not  alone 
as  it  has  for  the  last  fifty  years,  but  as  it  has 
for  centuries  past.  Only  it  has  moved.  The 
first  blow  was  given  to  its  old  haunts  when 


THE  LATIN   QUARTER.  75 

new  streets,  such  as  the  Rue  Soufflot,  the 
Rue  des  ficoles,  and  the  Boulevard  St. 
Germain,  played  havoc  with  the  labyrinth 
of  little  tortuous  thoroughfares  through 
which  Francois  Villon  and  the  "bad  boys" 
used  to  wander  and  play  so  many  good  prac- 
tical jokes.  This  year  the  "Boul  Mich,"  the  fa- 
mous Boulevard  St.  Michel,  which  has  always 
been  the  great  artery  of  the  Quarter,  has  put 
in  electric  light!  Who  can  imagine  Bohemia 
and  electric  light?  Its  inhabitants  have  fled 
this  modern  splendor.  Some  of  them  have 
gone  to  the  neighborhood  of  the  Jardin  des 
Plantes,  but  by  far  the  greatest  number  have 
transported  their  uncertain  Penates  to  the 
upper  end  of  the  Boulevard  Montparnasse,  to 
xMontrouge,  and  into  the  \'augiraud  quartier. 
This  is  the  reason  why  you  see  them  less 
and  less  in  the  part  of  Paris  where  you  might 
naturally  look  for  them;  the  famous  bit 
in  which,  side  by  side,  rise  the  College  of 
France,  the  School  of  Medicine,  the  Sor- 
bonne,  the  School  of  Pharmacy,  the  School  of 
Decorative  Arts,  the  Law  School,  and  a  little 
nearer  the  Seine,  the  School  of  the  Beaux 
Arts.  Some  of  them  have  been  known  to 
appear  in  this  region,  and  even  to  attend  an 
occasional  lecture,  but  I  shall  astonish  no  one 
who  knows  anything  about  Bohemia  in  say- 
ing that  these  compose  the  minority.  You 
have  no  right  to  the  title  of  Bohemian  on 


76  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

the  left  bank  of  the  Seine  unless  you  have  for 
motto  a  certain  saying  of  the  landscape 
painter  Nazon:  "II  y  a  des  annees  ou  Ton 
n'est  pas  en  train,"  "There  are  years  when 
you  are  not  in  the  mood  for  doing  anything!" 
Or  another  by  an  author  whose  name  has  un- 
fortunately fallen  into  oblivion,  "II  ne  faut 
pas  travailler  entre  les  repas."  "You  must 
not  work  between  meals!" 

The  Bohemian  is  essentially  an  idler,  but 
at  least  he  is  an  idler  of  a  particular  species. 
He  has  a  horror  of  the  fixed  task,  of  anything 
that  he  ought  to  do;  while  often  nobody  could 
work  harder  when  it  is  a  question  of  some- 
thing with  which  he  has  no  concern  at  all, 
I  know  of  two  medical  students,  for  instance, 
who  are  excellent  sculptors,  of  an  artist  who 
much  more  frequently  haunts  the  hospitals 
than  the  studios,  and  of  a  man  going  in  for  the 
degree  of  Master  of  Arts  who  spends  his  en- 
tire time  in  composing  music,  as  his  means  do 
not  allow  him  the  luxury  of  a  piano,  with  the 
aid  of  a  ruler  which  he  makes  resound  on  his 
table  to  get  the  key. 

To  do  Bohemia  justice  I  must  say  that 
there  are  certain  of  its  inhabitants  who  are 
real  dilettantes  in  idleness,  and  never  cultivate 
anything  but  the  arts  of  conversation  and 
repose.  I  knew  one  of  these,  a  brilliant 
talker,  and  a  great  connoisseur  in  all  artistic 
things,  who  never  appears  anywhere  before 


THE  LATIN  QUARTER.  77 

dinner-time,  for  the  simple  reason  that  his 
habitual  hour  of  rising  is  four  in  the  after- 
noon. He  is  the  son  of  a  well-known  Naval 
Officer  at  Toulon,  and  is  in  Paris  to  study 
medicine,  but  he  has  never  done  anything 
more  than  enter  his  name  at  the  College,  and 
to  this  day  has  not  passed  even  his  first  ex- 
amination. For  that  matter,  he  never  will 
pass  it,  and  his  only  intellectual  labors  are 
the  composition  of  the  letters  by  which  he 
keeps  his  family  informed  as  to  his  progress 
in  his  studies.  I  am  told  they  are  marvels 
of  ingenuity,   and   can  well   believe   it. 

One  of  my  latest  souvenirs  of  the  Latin 
Quarter  is  of  a  certain  warm  evening  in  July 
when  I  had  the  unexpected  good  fortune  to 
catch  a  glimpse  of  Bohemia  at  home.  I  was 
dining  with  friends  in  the  Rue  Notre  Dame 
des  Champs  in  an  apartment  on  the  second 
floor,  whose  salon  looked  out  over  a  whole 
little  city  of  studios,  hidden  among  green 
leaves.  After  dinner  we  talked  late,  and  as 
I  sat  by  the  open  window  a  vague  murmur 
that  floated  in  every  now  and  then  through 
the  stillness  of  the  summer  night  at  last  so 
roused  my  curiosity  that  I  leaned  over  and 
looked  out.  Just  below  me,  stretched  out  on 
a  little  square  of  grass  about  the  size  of  a 
pocket  handkerchief,  under  the  Hght  of  three 
Venetian  lanterns  suspended  from  an  anemic- 
looking   apricot   tree,   were   six   youths   ab- 


78  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

sorbed  in  something  tliat  one  of  their  number 
was  reading  aloud.  It  appeared  to  be  a  sort 
of  weird  Scandinavian  poem,  in  which  oc- 
curred every  tliree  minutes  or  so  this  refrain: 
"Then  Halmar,  son  of  Halmar,  the  warrior 
with  the  long  hair  and  piercing  eye,  seized 
with  his  robust  hand  the  pointed  javelins." 
There  was  no  apparent  coherence  to  this  epic, 
which  nevertheless  seemed  to  throw  the  audi- 
ence into  an  ecstasy  of  joy.  I  was  speculat- 
ing as  to  the  cause  of  this,  wondering  whether 
they  really  liked  this  tale  of  "Halmar,  son  of 
Halmar,"  or  whether  by  one  of  those  delicate 
sentiments  peculiar  to  the  Latin  Quarter  they 
had  plunged  themselves  into  this  literature  of 
the  North  on  that  hot  evening  to  give  them- 
selves the  delusion  of  being  cool,  when  the 
reading  was  interrupted  by  a  sudden  invasion 
of  the  garden.  It  was  the  concierge  in  an 
extremely  airy  toilette,  who  invited  the  com- 
pany with  force  to  let  honest  people  sleep. 
They  immediately  dispersed  without  protesta- 
tions, with  the  exception  of  one  individual 
who  lived  in  the  garden,  and  disappeared  into 
a  sort  of  vague  perch  in  wood  which  was  at 
the  same  time  his  apartment  and  studio.  My 
friends  told  me  that  he  was  a  Hungarian 
artist,  who  had  the  misfortune  to  believe 
himself  alternatively  the  greatest  painter,  the 
greatest  sculptor,  and  the  greatest  poet  in  the 
world,  with  the  happy  result  that  he  never 


THE   LATIN   QUARTER.  79 

finished  anything  in  either  one  of  these  arts, 
and  rarely  paid  his  rent. 

This  Httle  group  of  Bohemians,  with  others, 
were  in  the  habit  of  meeting,  when  any  of 
them  had  enough  money,  in  a  cafe  that  is  now 
one  of  the  most  celebrated  of  the  student  re- 
sorts; a  cafe  with  a  charming  name,  about 
which  Hngers  some  of  the  perfume  of  old  ro- 
mance: la  Closerie  des  Lilas.  It  juts  out  Hke  a 
prow  at  the  meeting  of  the  Boulevard  Mont- 
parnasse  and  the  rue  Notre  Dame  des 
Champs,  and  not  only  is  it  provided  with  a 
shaded  terrace,  but  this  commands  a  superb 
view  of  the  Place  de  I'Observatoire,  on  which 
is  the  entrance  to  the  famous  Bal  Buller.  To 
these  advantages,  which  are  of  no  small  im- 
portance, it  joins  others  that  have  given  it  a 
reputation  among  the  entire  Bohemia  of 
Montparnasse.  The  garqons  have  a  delicate 
way  of  never  noticing  when  the  water  bottles 
that  are  ordered — since  you  must  keep  on  or- 
dering something  if  you  spend  the  entire  even- 
ing in  a  cafe — only  serve  to  replace  refresh- 
ments of  a  more  serious  nature,  involving 
pourboires,  and  they  are  quite  ready  to  give 
credit  for  a  week,  even  to  patrons  who  mani- 
festly have  not  funds  enough  to  let  them  in- 
dulge in  the  luxury  of  a  starched  collar.  Some 
are  students  I  know,  who  frequent  the  Close- 
rie, have  sometimes  tried  to  give  me  an  idea 
of  the  conversations  thev  have  heard  there  in 


8o  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

even  one  hour  of  a  single  evening.  What 
literary  paradoxes  and  inconceivable  philo- 
sophical theories,  w^hat  sweeping  criticisms  of 
the  art  of  all  nations  and  all  periods,  inter- 
spersed with  chafif  and  jokes  of  pyrotechnical 
brilliancy,  and  with  what,  in  quarter  jargon, 
would  be  called  the  abracadabrante  declama- 
tions of  a  young  model  who  had  just  discov- 
ered Maeterlinck!  Even  if  I  could  remember 
them  they  would  be  nothing  without  the  vis- 
ion of  the  terrace,  as  I  saw  it  one  night 
when  a  party  of  us  visited  it,  with  its  groups 
of  very  much  bearded  youths,  in  broad- 
brimmed  felt  hats,  smoking  clay  pipes  around 
tables  invariably  covered  with  empty  glasses. 
The  man  who  took  us  there,  a  young 
painter  of  the  Champs  de  Mars,  is  himself  a 
famous  Bohemian.  As  he  made  quite  a  hit  at 
last  year's  Salon,  and  as  I  am  sure  he  will 
some  day  be  seriously  known  to  fame,  I  will 
speak  of  him  only  by  his  initials,  B.  D.  He 
is  certainly  one  of  the  most  amusing,  most 
light-hearted,  and  most  improvident  individ- 
uals that  I  have  ever  met.  I  once  went  to  his 
studio.  It  was  perhaps  as  large  as  the  palm 
of  your  hand,  and  besides  the  miscellaneous 
objects  which  filled  every  corner, it  was  at  that 
time  further  encumbered  by  an  enormous 
moyen-age  citadel  in  card-board,  which  B.  D. 
had  made  himself.  He  had  wanted  to  paint  a 
picture  representing  a  "feudal  seigneur  stand- 


THE   LATIN   QUARTER.  8i 

ing  upon  the  tower  of  his  donjon,  contemplat- 
ing, in  the  midst  of  a  flight  of  crows,  villages 
burning  at  the  horizon."  As  he  had  neither 
the  inclination  nor  the  money  to  take  a  jour- 
ney to  see  a  real  chateau  of  the  middle  ages, 
he  had  made  one.  When  he  has  money  it 
slips  like  water  through  his  fingers.  All  his 
friends  banquet  at  his  expense,  while  he  does 
lithography  in  colors,  and  succeeds  perfectly, 
but  each  print  that  he  makes  costs  him  a  thou- 
sand francs.  When  his  purse  is  empty  his 
equanimity  remains  undisturbed.  He  lunches 
and  dines  with  the  internes  in  their  rooms  in 
one  of  the  numerous  hospitals  which  he  has 
decorated  with  his  humorous  sketches,  and 
where,  by  a  flattering  innovation,  he  is  in- 
scribed as  "interne  perpetuel."  If  a  day 
comes  when  he  absolutely  must  have  money, 
he  engages  in  the  most  astonishing  enter- 
prises. Lately  he  has  been  doing  panels  by 
the  piece,  to  decorate  a  restaurant  car. 

How  many  droll  stories  of  the  Latin  Quar- 
ter and  of  the  youth  of  famous  artists  and 
others  less  famous  he  has  told  us.  Who 
would  say  that  the  Quarter  was  dead  if  they 
could  hear  him  tell  with  all  his  dramatic  ra- 
ciness  of  "enfant  de  Paris,"  the  story  of  the 
'  mauvais  epicier" — the  wicked  grocer — to 
whom  a  band  of  students  from  the  Beaux 
.\rts  went  one  day  to  beg  him  to  let  them 
mould  his  leg,  under  the  pretext  that  it  was 


82  PARIS  AS  IT  IS. 

the  most  beautiful  one  in  France;  and  who, 
ha\'ing  had  the  simpHcity  to  accede  to  this 
flattering  request,  was  obliged  to  stay  impris- 
oned in  a  mass  of  plaster  and  bricks  for 
twenty-one  hours,  until  a  force  of  masons 
could  be  got  to  break  him  out  with  picks  and 
restore  him  to  his  weeping  family? 

Another  one  of  these  stories  that  I  remem- 
ber was  called  "The  true  Tale  of  the  Famous 
Tournament  of  Bouguereau,  the  Master,  and 
his  comrade,  Blaise  Desgoflfes."  It  told  of 
how  in  their  student  days,  Bouguereau  and 
Blaise  DesgofTes  decided  to  find  out  the  secret 
of  Rubens's  painting  and  each  challenged  the 
other  to  discover  it  first.  Both  were  to  take 
the  same  subject  and  work  at  it  till  the  "trick 
of  the  Rubens"  was  discovered.  The  theme 
agreed  upon  was  a  chaste  but  simple  chest- 
nut, of  the  variety  known  as  horse.  For 
two  whole  months  neither  Bouguereau  nor 
Blaise  Desgofifes  left  his  canvas  except  to 
go  to  the  Louvre  to  study  the  "Triomphs  of 
Maire  de  Medicis"  or  the  "Kermesse."  At 
last,  on  the  sixtieth  day  the  two  met  in  the 
street  on  the  way  to  each  other's  studios,  each 
brandishing  in  his  hand  a  chef-d'oeuvre  rep- 
resenting a  horse-chestnut.     Both  had  won. 

"And  that  is  the  reason,"  added  B.  D.,  with 
imperturbable  gravity,  "why  Bouguereau  and 
Desgofifes  paint  hke  Rubens!" 


The  Men  of  Letters. 

I  wonder  why  no  critic  has  ever  thought  of 
writing  a  comparative  history  of  Hterature 
and  art!  It  is  surprising,  when  you  compare 
the  two,  to  see  how  their  evolution  has  fol- 
lowed the  same  lines.  Take  the  ballads  of 
Villon,  for  instance;  now  light,  now  deep,  now 
mocking,  now  tender.  With  their  alternate 
lightness  and  majesty  they  are  exact  em- 
blems of  the  Gothic  cathedrals  of  the  time, 
where  grinning  demons  are  side  by  side  with 
pensive  virgins.  Then  under  the  Renaissance 
the  exquisite  but  mannered  delicacy  of  a 
Ronsard  has  the  same  charm  as  the  old 
French  art  of  the  day,  through  which  has 
filtered  the  decadent  grace  of  the  Italian.  In 
the  time  of  Louis  XIV.,  Racine  shows  all  the 
classic  force  and  harmonious  coloring  of  a 
Poussin,  while  Corneille  has  the  sumptuous- 
ness,  the  boldness,  and  the  pomposity  as  well, 
of  Lebrun,  the  decorator  of  Versailles. 
Boucher  corresponds  to  the  dainty  frivolity 
and  the  corruption  of  the  pcixts  maxtrcs, 
makers  of  madrigals,  while  Watteau,  under 
his  apparent  trifling,  hides  the  same  profound 
philosophy  as  Montesquieu  in  his  Lcttrcs  Pcr- 

83 


84  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

sancs,  Diderot  in  his  Lc  Nevcu  de  Ramcaii  and 
Voltaire  in  his  Contes.  The  Revolution  and 
the  Empire  were  nourished  with  false  an- 
tiquity in  the  poems  of  the  Abbe  Delisle,  and 
the  dramas  of  Marie  Joseph  Chenier  as 
much  as  with  David's  Romans.  Chateaubriand 
and  Madame  de  Stael  broke  away  from  classic 
traditions  at  the  same  time  that  Gerard  and 
Gros  emancipated  themselves  from  historical 
painting,  and  Victor  Hugo,  not  more  than 
Delacroix,  is  the  leader  of  the  romantic  move- 
ment. The  whole  attempt  of  the  Barbizon 
school  to  reveal  the  painter's  individual  mind 
and  soul  through  his  pictures  of  the  world 
surrounding  him  is  identical  with  that  in  the 
books  of  George  Sand,  Stendahl  and  Flaubert. 
From  a  distance  of  half  a  century  we  have 
been  able  to  form  an  opinion  of  the  works  of 
this  last  great  period.  But  if  it  be  hard  to 
judge  correctly  of  the  art  of  to-day,  it 
is  infinitely  harder  to  give  its  relative  value 
to  contemporary  literature,  especially  in  a 
place  like  Paris.  Ideas  seethe  there  as  though 
they  formed  part  of  the  very  atmosphere. 
Simple  conversations  often  reveal  so  much 
imagination  and  such  brilliant  traits  that  you 
feel  yourself  in  touch  with  talent  of  a  high 
order.  The  press  is  literature,  and  every 
other  man  you  meet  is  in  some  way  a  man  of 
letters.  Then  this  is  a  transition  period.  We 
find  no  towering  masterpieces  in  France  at 


THE  MEN  OF  LETTERS.  85 

this  end  of  the  century,  crystalHzing  the  es- 
sence of  the  time,  as  it  were,  and  no  schools. 
This  is  probably  because  of  the  eclecticism  of 
Paris  at  the  present  day.  It  is  in  times  of 
fighting  for  ideas  that  leaders  stand  out; 
others  group  themselves  around  them,  and 
schools  are  formed.  Tlie  battle  for  ideas  also 
makes  for  chef  d'ocuzrcs.  Rousseau,  Puvis 
de  Chavannes  and  Whistler  would  probably 
have  been  far  less  great  if  they  had  not  "been 
refused  at  the  salons. 

We  find  ta-day  that  many  great  prophets, 
like  Zola,  have  seen  the  decline  of  their  pop- 
ularity, and  their  pupils  have  either  been  for- 
gotten or  have  evolved,  like  Huysmans  or  the 
Rosny  brothers,  who  are  links  between  two 
periods  of  literary  art,  probably  as  distinct  as 
the  epochs  of  Louis  XV.  and  Louis  XVL 

What  is  most  interesting  in  the  literary 
situation  of  to-day,  I  think,  are  general  views 
of  the  literary  field  and  the  men  of  letters,  an 
attempt  to  discover  what  has  really  made  for 
itself  a  permanent  place  in  literature  and  had 
an  influence  on  its  evolution,  and  what  are  the 
tendencies  for  the  future.  But  here  I  can 
necessarily  make  only  a  hasty  survey,  and  this 
must  be  taken  only  as  an  effort  to  discern 
tendencies. 

As  we  look  back  we  find  that  though  the 
French  literature  of  to-day  got  its  impulse 
from  Flaubert,  George  Sand  and  Stendhal,  a 


86  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

great  evolution  has  taken  place  since  then. 
It  has  drawn  largely  from  foreign  sources; 
the  popularizing  of  Scandinavian,  German, 
Russian,  English  and  Italian  works  has 
largely  influenced  it.  And,  more  than  any- 
thing else,  the  luminous  philosophy  of  Taine 
has  had  a  great  influence  upon  the  literary 
movement  by  establishing  the  rights  of  the 
critic.  Taine  overthrew  in  France  the  theories 
of  Hume,  of  Kant  and  of  Hegel,  tending  to 
prove  that  each  person  is  the  judge  of  what 
he  sees  by  demonstrating  that  science  can 
exactly  establish  in  what  proportion  dififerent 
imaginations  transform  the  same  reality,  and 
therefore  receive  impressions  more  or  less 
elevated,  and  consequently  more  or  less  open 
to  discussion. 

I  remember  seeing  this  admirably  illus- 
trated one  day  at  the  Salon  when  two  work- 
men were  talking  about  a  picture.  It  was  a 
representation  of  a  field  of  wheat,  crude  in 
color,  with  every  blade  carefully  and  minutely 
painted,  reproduced  as  in  a  photograph. 
"Sapristi,  but  that  man's  got  that  wheat 
field  well;"  was  what  they  were  saying. 
With  their  elementary  intellectual  and  artistic 
development,  that  was  probably  the  only  sort 
of  picture  which  could  give  them  the  sensa- 
tion of  a  real  field,  and  the  sudden  emotion 
which  a  more  highly  organized  and  cultivated 
temperament  would  have  before  a  landscape 


tj 


THE  MEN  OF  LETTERS.  87 

in  which  there  was  some  wide,  elevated  im- 
pression of  nattire,  interpreted  through  the 
temperament  of  an  artist,  they  could  not  miss, 
for  they  had  never  known  it.  No  matter  what 
form  the  evolution  of  literature  may  have 
taken  during  the  last  years,  its  principle  has 
always  remained  the  same;  that  is,  the  scrupu- 
lous study  of  the  different  sensations  which 
life  constantly  unrolling  itself  everywhere 
makes  upon  the  mind  and  soul  of  each  indi- 
vidual. This  seems  to  be  a  sort  of  touchstone 
for  judging  French  literature. 

One  of  the  most  important  forms  of  the 
literary  evolution,  of  course,  has  been  the 
naturalist  movement,  with  M.  Zola  at  its 
head.  It  is  nothing  new  to  say  that  M.  Zola 
never  was  really  a  naturalist.  His  imagina- 
tion also  transformed  reality,  and  he  saw  of 
humanity  only  its  envelope.  He  built  up  a 
colossal  system,  but  only  to  interpret  the  ani- 
mal side  of  human  nature  from  a  pessimistic 
standpoint,  and  this  will  not  have  an  influence 
that  can  be  lasting,  it  seems  to  me,  because  it 
is  too  one-sided.  I  have  never  so  well  under- 
stood Zola's  incompleteness  as  a  literary  art- 
ist as  one  day  when  someone  pointed  out  to 
me  his  house  in  the  country  from  which  came 
the  famous  "Soirees  dc  Medan."  It  stood  on 
a  hill  overlooking  the  magnificent  landscape 
of  the  Valley  of  the  Seine,  which  must  have 
inspired  some  of  his  fmest  descriptions,  like 


88  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

those  in  "Unc  Page  d' Amour."  But  every- 
thing which  revealed  the  personaHty  of  the 
man  was  uninspired  and  common.  The  house, 
an  unattractive  and  pretentious  white  struc- 
ture, was  surrounded  by  such  a  garden  as 
would  be  the  ideal  of  a  retired  grocer,  filled 
with  an  infinity  of  little  multi-colored  flower 
beds  suggesting  dishes  of  hors  d'oeuvres — 
fillets  of  anchovies  bordered  with  chopped 
yolk  of  egg  and  parsley. 

It  is  interesting  to  follow  out  the  literary 
careers  of  the  men  whom  Zola  grouped  round 
him  in  those  famous  evenings  at  Aledan,  from 
which  came  that  book  of  short  stories  in 
which  M.  Guy  de  Maupassant  established  his 
fame  with  "Boule  de  Suif.  It  was  only  yes- 
terday, it  seems  to  me,  in  the  little  parish 
church  of  my  own  quarter  in  Paris,  I  heard 
the  De  Profundis  sung  over  the  body  of  this 
great  master  of  the  short  story,  who  had  just 
died  dramatically  in  a  private  hospital,  chas- 
ing imaginary  butterflies,  in  which  he  fancied 
he  savv  his  fleeting  ideas.  If  AI.  Guy  de  Mau- 
passant, in  a  general  classification,  is  to  be 
placed  among  the  naturalists,  in  reality  he  is 
not  one.  He  got  his  splendid  literary  train- 
.^ng,  nevertheless,  from  Flaubert.  "If  you  see 
a  grocer  standing  in  a  doorway,"  said  Flau- 
bert, "seize  what  is  characteristic  of  that 
grocer  and  write  a  description  of  him  which 
v/ill  always  bring  up  th.at  particular  man,  and 


THE  MEN  OF  LETTERS.  Sf 

no  one  else."  Maupassant  was  under  the  in- 
fluence of  the  older  writer  for  years,  and  no 
other  person  was  ever  admitted  to  so  com- 
plete an  intimacy  with  Flaubert.  Teachers 
generally  give  to  their  disciples  only  what  is 
superficial  in  their  work.  Their  personal  man- 
ner of  thinking  and  seeing,  which  is  what  really 
differentiates  them  from  others,  they  rarely 
give  away.  Their  pupils,  therefore,  are  gen- 
erally only  their  imitators;  but  Flaubert  gave 
to  Guy  de  Maupassant  all  his  best  qualities  of 
thought  and  form,  at  the  same  time  that 
de  Maupassant  remained  always  himself,  in- 
tellectually a  sensitive  and  lofty  spirit,  apart. 
Before  the  simplest  person  he  had  an  artistic 
emotion.  He  always  saw  the  ainc,  the  mind 
and  soul,  reflected  through  its  environment. 
Then  with  his  sure  artistic  instinct  he  elimi- 
nated every  detail  unnecessary  for  revealing 
this,  while  the  exquisite  perfection  of  his  style 
gave  him  a  perfect  medium  for  expressing  it. 
He  stands  so  high  in  his  genre  that  no  one  has 
ever  attempted  to  imitate  him.  I  think  of 
only  one  writer  of  short  stories  whose  art  in 
any  way  resembles  his,  and  that  is  Mary 
Wilkins.  She  also  has  the  same  sort  of  artis- 
tic emotion  before  even  the  simplest  soul,  and 
the  same  discriminating  process  of  eliminat- 
ing everything  that  is  foreign  to  the  impres- 
sion she  wishes  to  give. 

M.  Henry  Ceard.  the  man  who  wrote  the 


90  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

most  remarkable  of  the  Medan  stories  after 
M.  de  Maupassant,  we  find  has  entirely 
dropped  out.  He  has  never  been  able  to  con- 
sole himself  for  the  fall  of  naturalism,  and 
lives  outside  of  the  world  in  a  little  Brittany 
fishing  village,  working  continually  on 
dramas  and  comedies  which  the  theatres  and 
publishers  will  have  none  of.  Oddly  enough, 
though,  one  day  last  summer,  living  drama, 
more  poignant  and  terrible  than  anything 
men  can  invent,  came  to  seek  him  out  in  his 
corner.  One  morning  very  early,  when  the 
dusk  had  scarcely  begun  to  whiten,  a  sound 
of  voices  and  of  clashing  of  guns  made  him 
leap  from  his  bed.  Dreyfus  had  arrived  in 
France,  and  was  landing  just  under  his 
window. 

M.  Huysmans,  another  of  the  Medan  men, 
has  gone  from  naturalism  into  Catholicism, 
but  as  I  consider  him  one  of  the  men  most 
characteristic  of  the  latest  development  of  the 
literary  movement,  I  shall  speak  of  him  later. 

M.  Paul  Hervieu  is  the  newest  of  the 
Academicians.  Just  elected  to  the  chair  of 
Pailleron,  he  intended  to  be  a  diplomat,  but 
on  being  appointed  attache  to  the  French 
legation  in  Mexico,  could  not  bring  himself 
to  leave  Paris,  and  gave  up  diplomacy  for 
literature,  in  which  his  success  was  immediate. 
He  is  young,  fine-looking,  with  a  sympathetic 
personality.     He  is  one  of  a  pleiad  of  young 


THE  MEN  or  LETTERS.  ()l 

novelists  who  cultivate  literature  a.  these;  he 
writes  books  with  a  purpose,  which  may 
be  either  a  principle  or  a  paradox.  It  is  the 
school  of  Alexandre  Dumas  fils,  but  pro- 
foundly modified  by  the  change  in  tastes,  and 
fashions,  and  by  foreign  influence,  more  par- 
ticularly that  of  Ibsen  and  Tolstoi,  and  it  is 
marked  by  the  extreme  large-mindedness 
which  characterizes  every  sort  of  art  to-day — 
the  pcnsce  ccrite  as  well  as  pcnscc  peintc.  The 
underlying  principle  is  always  to  view  life 
sincerely  through  one's  own  temperament, 
"de  se  rouler  en  son  moi,"  as  said  the  old 
philosopher,  Montaigne.  Besides  M.  Paul 
Hervieu,  with  V Armature  and  Pcints  par  cux 
Mcmcs  and  the  play  Lcs  Tenaillcs,  others  of 
this  group  are  AI.  Porto-Riche  (author  of 
rAmoiireusc),  Brieux,  M.  Maurice  Barres  (au- 
thor of  Deracincs),  who  was  a  Boulangist 
Deputy  and  is  now  one  of  the  strongest  par- 
tisans of  Deroulede;  M.  Paul  Adam  (author 
of  La  Force),  an  employe  in  the  Ministere  des 
Postes  et  Telegraphe,  who  will  write  between 
two  letters  on  administrative  detail,  such  a  re- 
markably constructed  novel  as  "Emprciiite, 
against  the  Jesuit  schools;  M.  de  Curel  (au- 
thor of  la  Nouvclc  Idolc),  the  rich  and  noble 
owner  of  a  steel  foundry,  who  writes  in  his 
leisure  moments;  and  then  there  is  the 
"Academy  Goncourt,"  with  the  Marguerite 
Brothers,   sons   of   General    Marguerite,   the 


92 


PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 


hero  of  the  war  of  1870,  and  the  freres  Rosny, 
who  also  especially  illustrate  the  tendencies 
of  to-day,  and  whom  I  will  speak  of  later. 

One  thing  that  seems  surprising  to-day  is 
to  see  how  limited  an  influence,  comparatively 
speaking,  the  Goncourts  have  apparently  had 
upon  literature.  You  will  find  English  critics 
of  ten  years  ago  comparing  the  influence  of 
what  they  call  their  luminous  pages  with  those 
of  Flaubert.  One  of  these,  now  dead,  speaks 
of  "the  movement  of  the  last  thirty  years  hav- 
ing its  descriptive  germs  in  Rousseau,  Cha- 
teaubriand and  GautLer;  its  psychological  pre- 
cursors in  Diderot,  Stendhal  and  Balzac,  and 
culminating  in  the  two  consummate  artists, 
Flaubert  and  de  Goncourt."  The  de  Gon- 
courts were  not  luminous  in  the  sense  that 
they  were  not  clear.  No  writer  ever  makes  a 
great  impress  upon  his  time  unless  his  style 
is  simple  and  clear.  The  de  Goncourts,  no 
doubt,  were  an  influence,  but  they  were  a 
transition,  not  a  culmination.  In  "Soeur 
Philomcnc"  you  find  the  most  remarkable 
example  of  exactly  what  they  put  into  litera- 
ture. With  one  page,  the  exquisite  descrip- 
tion of  a  hospital  ward,  you  have  a  setting 
for  the  entire  book. 

When  Paris  began  to  tire  of  naturalism,  a 
few  years  ago,  it  welcomed  with  extraordi- 
nary ardor  the  analytical  novel  brought  to  it 
by  M.  Paul   Bourget,  a  favorite  disciple  of 


THE  MEN  OF  LETTERS.  93 

Balzac.  When  he  was  young  he  was  a 
disciple  of  Balzac  in  the  most  literal  sense  of 
the  word,  for  he  carried  his  veneration  for  the 
great  master  to  such  a  point  that,  like  him,  he 
worked  late  into  the  night  and  set  himself  at 
his  writing  again  at  three  in  the  morning,  like 
Balzac,  after  drinking  a  great  cup  of  black 
cofiFee,  equally  like  Balzac.  At  that  time  he 
was  a  poor  little  professor  in  the  ficole  Al- 
sacienne,  and  lived  in  one  room  in  an  attic  in 
the  Rue  Guy-de-Labrosse,  furnished  simply 
with  a  little  iron  bed,  an  old  armchair,  books, 
and  Balzac's  bust.  His  old  pupils  wall  tell 
you  that  even  then  they  remarked  the  ex- 
treme variety  in  his  cravats  which  was  the 
first  indication  of  his  leaning  towards  that  z'ic 
elegante  which  it  was  to  be  his  destiny  to 
paint.  Many  of  the  traits  of  Casal,  one  of 
his  early  heroes,  who  ranged  his  forty  pairs 
of  boots  in  a  room  especially  set  apart  for 
that  purpose,  and  had  all  his  linen  latmdered 
in  London,  he  took  from  himself.  In  the 
early  days  he  tised  to  ramble  through  the 
Latin  Quarter  and  along  the  quays  with  M. 
Franqois  Coppee  and  ]\I.  Barbey  d'Aurevilly, 
and  one  of  the  greatest  pleasures  of  the  three 
was  dining  together  on  Sunday  evening  at 
Coppee's.  Even  if  AL  Coppee  and  his  sister 
were  away,  the  old  servant  put  on  th^  pof  an 
feu  just  the  same,  and  M.  Barbey  d'Aurevilly 
dined   alone,   except   for   the   society   of   the 


94  PARIS   AS    IT   IS. 

poet's  cats.     It  is  of  those  days  that  Riche- 
pin's  verses  speak: 

"/'ai  fait  tin  dejeuner  trcs  faiblc  dies  Boiirget, 
II  n'az'ait  pas  de  vin.'"  .  .  . 
Now  M.  Paul  Bourget  is  married — range — 
and  his  large  apartment  in  the  Rue  Barbet 
de  Jouy,  near  the  Chamber  of  Deputies,  is  the 
comfortable  interior  of  a  man  who  has  "ar- 
rived." His  salon  is  crowded  with  works  of 
art  brought  back  from  Italy;  a  head  of  Christ 
by  a  primitive  painter  looks  down  sadly  on 
the  modern  English  chairs  of  polished  wood, 
covered  with  morocco.  M.  Bourget  is  still  a 
hard  worker,  but  his  star  has  paled.  His 
books  are  no  longer  Parisian  events.  Per- 
haps, however,  this  is  because  of  the  con- 
stantly increasing  indifiference  of  the  public  to 
society  novels  like  his,  representing  only  a 
cosmopolitan  and  artificial  world,  an  un- 
healthy exception  in  the  life  of  Paris.  His 
first  books  were  based  simply  on  his  aventures 
de  petit  professeur,  in  which  he  used  to  give 
an  animate  form  to  his  studies  of  the  con- 
sciousness. 

M.  Marcel  Prevost,  another  writer  who  has 
disputed  M.  Paul  Bourget's  popularity  with 
the  public,  especially  the  feminine  public,  and 
not  without  success,  is  in  a  period  of  decided 
decline.  While  M.  Bourget  always  repre- 
sented rich  and  elegant  society  women  seek- 
ing, for  perverse  sensations,  through  dcsoeu- 


THE  MEN  OF  LETTERS.  95 

vrement  and  nervosity,  M.  Marcel  Prevost 
went  still  farther,  and  took  as  models  ac- 
tresses, dcmi-mondaincs  or  rastoqoiicres. 
Neither  of  these  two  writers  ever  made 
studies'  of  the  real  Parisicnnc,  interested  as 
much  in  her  home  as  in  society,  and  in  things 
of  the  mind  as  in  the  elegance  of  her  dress 
and  surroundings.  And  for  that  matter,  how 
could  they  have  studied  these?  M.  Bourget 
only  began  to  go  into  society  after  his  success 
as  a  novelist;  M.  Prevost,  a  graduate  of  the 
ficole  Polytechnicjue,  was  an  engineer  in  a 
tobacco  manufactory  in  a  provincial  town  in 
the  Nord,  and  only  came  to  Paris  after  his 
first  society  novel,  "le  Scorpion,"  had  proved 
a  success. 

One  thing  we  must  remember  in  thinking 
of  French  writers- is  the  way  in  which  books 
are  looked  upon  as  a  source  of  fixed  income 
in  France.  A  man  expects  a  rente  from  his 
novels.  He  produces  one  a  year  as  another 
man  would  do  so  much  business  a  year.  And 
almost  always  in  the  genre  which  he  finds  the 
public  wants  and  will  buy.  This  statement 
must  not  be  taken  too  generally,  but  it  is  cer- 
tainly a  decided  factor  in  the  immense  dis- 
parity that  there  is  apparently  between  French 
letters  and  French  life.  AI.  Prevost,  for  in- 
stance, appealed  to  the  curiosity  of  the  femme 
de  mcrnde  about  the  fcmmc  of  the  demi-monde. 
As  this  took,  he  kept  on.     He  is  successful. 


96  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

too,  because,  he  writes  well.     He  is  a  perfect 
story-teller. 

It  is  quite  natural  for  me  to  follow  these 
two  "feministcs" — M.  Bourget  and  M.  Her- 
mant — with  Gyp,  'Slme.  de  Martel-Janville. 
who  is  noble,  has  the  blood  of  Mirabeau  in 
her  veins,  and  proves  it  as  much  by  her  verve 
in  dialogue  as  by  her  foiigue  as  a  politician. 
For  Mme.  Gyp  is  not  satisfied  with  writing 
delicious  stories  like  "le  Marriage  de  Chiffon," 
or  '"sccncttcs''  satirizing  the  morals  and  man- 
ners of  the  time;  she  also  lets  her  voice  be 
heard  in  politics,  and  very  loud.  She  was  the 
friend  of  Felix  Faure.  She  was  also  the 
friend  of  Boulanger,  and  one  of  the  most 
active  electioneers  for  the  General's  candi- 
date. She  went  from  cabaret  to  cabaret  in 
the  little  summer  resort  of  Lion-sur-]Mer, 
where  she  had  a  country  house,  haranguing 
the  fishermen,  and  the  evening  of  election 
day,  on  the  triumph  of  her  candidate,  she 
went  herself,  and  took  ofY  the  doorbell  of  the 
defeated  Republican.  This  brought  her  into 
the  Normandy  police  court,  where  she  was 
fined  five  francs,  and  the  result  was  a  bril- 
liant satire  from  her  pen,  "How  Elections  Are 
Carried  On  at  Tiger-by-the-Sea,"  with  illus- 
trations by  Bob,  which  made  her  famous. 
Gyp  does  everything  with  the  same  ardor. 
She  rides  horseback;  she  paints  portraits  as 
well    as     decorative    things,    always     signed 


THE  MEN  OF  LETTERS.  97 

"Bob;"  she  writes  indefatigably.     She  gener- 
ally works  at  night. 

Only  a  few  of  the  women  who  have  ever 
Hved  have  been  creators,  and  Gyp  is  one  of 
them.  She  is  absolutely  without  pedantry, 
and,  as  someone  has  said  of  her  wittily  in 
Paris,  "She  is  the  first  French  woman  of  let- 
ters who  has  resigned  herself  not  to  be  a  man 
of  letters."  Her  books,  the  type  of  disre- 
spect for  everything  and  everybody,  certainly 
are  not  to  be  taken  as  serious  pictures  of 
French  life,  for  she  is  a  satirist — nevertheless, 
a  satirist  of  great  esprit  and  charm — and" 
a  polemicist  of  violence,  and  everything  there- 
fore is  necessarily  exaggerated.  With  the 
money  she  has  made  from  her  books  she  has 
bought  and  restored  the  old  ruined  castle  of 
the  Mirabeaux  in  Provence,  for  while  Gyp 
lashes  pitilessly  the  little  weaknesses  of 
others,  she  allows  herself  a  trifle  of  vanity 
over  her  genealogy. 

M,  Henri  Lavedan,  M.  Abel  Hermant,  M. 
Maurice  Donnay  are  three  men  whom  you  in- 
stinctively associate  with  Gyp,  since  they  all  have 
the  same  genre  of  writing.  M.  Henri  Lavedan, 
author  of  "Catherine,"  one  of  the  latest  men 
elected  to  the  Academic  Frangaise,  son  of  a 
greatly  esteemed  man  of  letters,  created  a 
little  scandal  in  the  grave  palace  of  the  im- 
mortals by  letting  the  title  of  Academician 
appear  on  the  poster  of  such  a  comedie  as 


98  PARIS    .IS    IT   IS. 

"V'ieux  Marcheur,"  certainly  the  most  daring 
play  that  has  ever  been  put  upon  the  stage. 
M.  Henri  Lavedan  began  Hfe,  after  leaving 
the  clerical  school  where  he  was  educated, 
by  doing  nothing.  He  was  for  a  long  time 
one  of  the  bored  members  of  a  band  of  "de- 
sueuvres"  youths  who  called  themselves  "Les 
Fauchciirs,"  because  their  distinguishing 
characteristic  was  to  carry  their  walking 
sticks  in  a  listless  fashion  with  the  handle 
down,  as  reapers  hold  their  scythes.  They 
used  to  meet  in  a  room  in  the  Cafe  Americain, 
on  the  Boulevard.  Disgust  for  these  inanities 
finally  made  a  satirist  out  of  AI.  Lavedan;  but, 
as  he  says  himself,  it  took  his  talent  a  long 
time  to  wake  up.  With  a  hatred  of  the  "monde 
chic/'  there  awoke  in  him  pity  and  tenderness 
for  the  simple  and  humble.  "There  are  two 
Lavedans  in  me,"  he  is  fond  of  saying;  "this 
one  and  that  one;"  and  he  points  to  his  head 
and  his  heart. 

M.  Maurice  Donnay,  who  made  his  debut 
as  a  poet  of  the  Chat  Noir,  is  the  most  bril- 
liant of  the  young  French  dramatists,  author 
of  "Lcs  Aiiiants"  and  "VAmoiircuses,''  brought 
out  at  the  Gymnase,  and  ''Le  Torrent,''  giw en  at 
the  Frangais.  In  passing,  I  might  speak  of  a 
whole  school  of  humorists  and  poets  born 
from  that  quaint  Bohemian  cafe  on  Mont- 
martre,  le  Chat  Noir — Alphonse  Allais,  Au- 
riol,  Tristan    Bernard,  Willy,  Franc-Nohain, 


THE  MEN  OF  LETTERS.  99 

Pierre  Weber.  They  nearly  all  owe  their 
success,  especially  Allais.  Auriol  and  Tristan 
Bernard,  to  their  imitation  of  American 
humorists. 

Among  what  would  be  called  the  great 
French  poets  of  to-day,  Fran-(;ois  Coppee  is 
the  last  who  can  be  said  to  belong  to  the 
Xaturalist  school.  His  enemies,  and  he  lias 
a  good  many  since  he  went  into  politics  in 
the  anti-Dreyfus  party,  will  tell  you  that  he  is 
in  poetry  what  George  Ohnet  is  in  prose,  and 
it  is  certain  that  his  genius  is  most  une(iual 
and  that  some  of  his  verses  have  laid  them- 
selves open  to  the  most  absurd  parodies.  You 
could  not  say  that  his  poem.  "The  Accident." 
a  story  of  the  heroism  of  a  railway  employe, 
beginning: 
"Montfort    was    a    stoker    on    the    Xorlhern 

Line," 
was  of  a  very  high  order  of  poetry.      It  has 
been  arranged  for  the  benefit  of  all  the  great 
railway  companies : 
"Alontfort    was    a    stoker    on    the    Western 

Line." 
"Montfort  was  a  stoker  on  the  Eastern  Line." 
"Montfort  was  a  stoker  on  the  Lyons  Line." 
"Montfort  was  a  stoker  on  the  Paris-Orleans 

Line,"  etc. 
X'evertheless,    Francois    Coppee   is    a    real 
poet  who  frequently  shows  fine  poetic  feeling. 
He    is    the    son    of    a    little    employe    in    the 


loo  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

ministry,  and  grandson  of  a  brave  bourgeoise 
of  Paris,  who  once  danced  a  gavotte  with 
Robespierre.  Coppee  never  finished  col- 
lege, and  never  studied  much  while  he  was 
there.  Once  when  he  was  appointed  by  the 
minister  to  distribute  the  prizes  in  one  of  the 
great  lycees,  he  could  think  of  no  better  sub- 
ject for  his  discourse  than  the  uselessness  of 
study,  of  which  he,  Frangois  Coppee,  was  the 
best  possible  example,  since  he  had  never 
been  anything  but  a  dunce  at  school,  and  that 
had  not  prevented  him  from  becoming  an 
Academician.  This  vras  a  source  of  great 
scandal  in  the  university  world,  and  great 
amusement  to  Paris. 

When  I  used  to  see  M.  Francois  Coppee 
four  or  five  years  ago  at  the  house  of  a 
common  friend,  he  seemed  as  young  as  a  boy, 
and,  indeed,  until  his  conversion  lately  to 
Catholicism,  after  a  very  serious  illness,  he 
Avas  very  young  in  character,  and  loved  noth- 
ing better  than  to  be  with  the  students.  He 
went  to  the  Bal  Bnllicr  and  similar  resorts, 
where,  before  him.  they  had  not  been  accus- 
tomed to  see  Academicians.  He  has  bought 
a  little  place  just  outside  Paris  called 
"la  Fraiziere,"  aiid  there  he  spends  nearly  all 
his  time  now  in  the  society  of  his  sister 
Annette,  his  dog  Trufife,  his  goat  Bella  and 
his  cat  Petit-Loulou. 

Thirty    or    forty    years    ago    he,    with    M. 


THE  MEN  OF  LETTERS.  loi 

Heredia  and  M.  Anatole  France,  made  up  a 
little  club  called  le  Parnasse.  M.  Catulle 
Mendes,  one  of  the  best  known  of  the 
dramatic  critics,  belonged  to  it  later,  I  think 
— a  curious  type,  who  has  published  an  in- 
finity of  novels  and  verses,  for  the  most  part 
written  on  the  tables  of  cafes,  or  in  cabs.  He 
is  an  eternal  nostambulc,  whose  adventures 
and  whose  duels  can  no  longer  be  counted. 
M.  Jose  Maria  de  Heredia  is  a  last  represen- 
tative of  the  school  of  Banville  or  Leconte 
de  Lisle,  those  poets  who  professed  the  cult 
of  rhyme,  and  thought  it  of  more  importance 
in  poetry  than  the  thought.  All  M.  de 
Heredia's  literary  baggage  is  contained  in 
120  sonnets  of  fourteen  verses,  chiseled  like 
antique  medals,  with  the  ideas  and  sonor- 
ous words  full  of  coloring  so  condensed  that 
they  succeed  in  evoking  immense  epopees. 
Someone  in  Paris  said  that  he  put  ten  cen- 
turies into  fourteen  lines,  and  someone  else 
that  his  poetry  was  a  "Liebig's  Extract."  No 
one  writes  more  perfect  French  than  this  nat- 
uralized Cuban.  He  is  the  father-in-law  of 
Andre  de  Regnier. 

As  to  M.  Anatole  France,  I  do  not  know 
that  anyone  has  ever  better  expressed  what 
he  means  to  the  age  than  Mr.  Henry  James  by 
saying  that  he  is  the  great  luxury  of  our  time. 
Fie  is  the  most  perfect  writer  and  the  clearest 
thinker  since  Voltaire.     Rut  when  vou  know 


I02  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

the  man  from  the  inside,  as  it  were,  from 
those  who  know  him  intimately,  you  find  that 
it  is,  above  everything  else,  as  a  critic  that  he 
must  be  considered;  a  critic  resigned  to  the 
things  of  to-day,  but  so  profoundly  skeptical 
for  the  future  as  to  have  evoked  the  criticism 
upon  himself  of  being  a  "universal  demora- 
lizer." His  skepticism  leads  him  to  be  pro- 
foundly indulgent  to  everything  and  every- 
body, even  himself,  and  he  has  abandoned  his 
family.  "L'Ormc  dii  Mail,'"  "Ic  Mannequin 
d'Osier;'  "TAnneau  d'Amcthyste,''  the  most 
cruel  criticisms  possible  upon  the  life  of  the 
third  republic,  unfortunately  arrive  at  no  con- 
clusions and  give  no  remedies.  M.  Anatole 
France  was  the  son  of  a  bookseller  on  the 
quais.  and  all  those  charming  glimpses  of 
childhood  in  "le  Journal  dc  Mon  Ami"  and 
"Pierre  Nosiere'  are  taken  from  his  own 
souvenirs. 

I  must  pass  over  the  other  critics,  of  whom 
so  much  has  been  written — M.  Jules  Lemaitre, 
M.  Brunetiere,  M.  fimile  Faguet — just  elected 
to  the  Academic  Franqais — mentioning  only 
M.  Andre  Chevrillon,  nephew  of  Taine,  the 
English  professor  in  a  provincial  Lycee,  if 
only  to  show  that  the  fine  art  of  criticism  in 
France  in  no  way  declines,  since  a  man  can 
make  a  sensation  in  Paris  with  two  critical  es- 
says such  as  M.  Chevrillon's  on  Rudyard  Kip- 
ling— to  go  back  to  French  poetry,  in  which 


THE  MEN  OF  LETTERS.  103 

there  has  been  such  a  decided  evolution  with 
the  school  of  the  symbolists,  of  whom  the  first 
were  Mallarme  and  Verlaine.  Our  Edgar  A. 
Poe  was  really  the  first  symbolist,  however. 
Even  though  it  took  the  French  to  discover 
him. 

The  only  way  to  understand  what  French 
symbolic  poetry  means  is,  I  think,  to  read  it — 
bits  of  it;  some  of  it  could  only  be  comprehen- 
sible to  "the  bon  Dieu  and  Ibsen,"  I  fear. 
Read  Verlaine's  "II  pleure  dans  mon  coeur 
comme  il  pleut  dans  la  ville."  Then  you  will 
wonder  how  you  ever  got  on  without  these 
bits.  Think,  for  instance,  of  the  very  element- 
ary emotion  in  our  old  lines,  "The  mel- 
ancholy days  have  come,"  etc.,  and  com- 
pare them  with  the  actual  shiver  you  feel  as 
you  read  Mallarme's  "Plaiiifc  d'Automnc,''  with 
its  sad  minor  note  struck  at  the  very  begin- 
ning: "Since  Maria  left  me  to  go  to  some  other 
star — z\.'hich, Orion,  Alta'ir,  or  tlioii,  green  Venus  f 
— /  ha-i'c  always  loved  solitude,"  and  then,  deep- 
ening the  impression,  symbol  after  symbol, 
in  the  most  delicate  nuances — loneliness, 
"How  many  long  days  I  have  spent  alone  with  my 
cat.  By  alone  I  mean  without  a  material  being, 
for  my  cat  is  a  mystic  companion,  a  spirit:"  the 
"moment,"  ''Since  that  white  creature  is  no 
more,  my  favorite  season  in  the  year  is  the  last 
languishing  days  of  summer  zvhich  precede  the 
autumn,  and  in  the  da\  the  hour  i^'hen  the  sun 


I04  P.iRIS   AS    IT   IS. 

rests  an  instant  just  before  fading  azvay,  throw- 
ing its  rays  of  yclhnv  copper  upon  the  gray  walls 
and  its  rays  of  red  copper  v.pon  the  ivindozv 
panes;"  and  then  there  is  the  sudden  contrast 
g-iven  by  the  playing  of  the  hand-organ, 
"zvhich  sings  langnishingly  nndcr  my  window  in 
the  great  alley  of  poplars  zuhosc  leaves  seem  dead 
to  me  even  in  the  spring-time,  since  Maria  passed 
through  it  zvith  the  zvaxen  tapers  for  the  last 
time.  JVhy  is  it  that  as  it  played  a  joyously 
ziilgar  air  zvJiich  zcoiild  put  gayety  into  the  heart 
of  the  faubourgs,  its  refrain  zi'ent  straight  to  my 
soul  and  made  me  weepT' 

This  is  exactly  the  same  method  of  giving 
impressions  as  that  of  the  painters  who  tri- 
umph to-day — Whistler,  Puvis  de  Chavannes, 
Menard,  Dauchez.  xA.n  entire  school  has  fol- 
lowed Verlaine  and  Mallarme,  from  A'l.  Henri 
de  Regnier,  extremely  classic  in  inspiration, 
extremely  colorist  in  method,  down  through 
Moreas,  Kahn,  Laforgue,  Stuart  Merrill, 
Francis  Viele-Griffin,  to  the  very  latest  men — 
Andre  Rivore,  Fernand  Gregh,  Andre  Dumas. 

Pierre  Loti  (Pierre  Viaud)  really  belongs 
among  the  poets.  He  is  the  greatest  artist 
of  all  the  men  of  letters.  Words  come  to  him 
no  matter  how;  he  expresses  all  his  emotions, 
his  sensations,  instinctively,  without  the  least 
efTort.  He  belongs  to  one  of  the  Huguenot 
families  in  La  Rochelle,  but  spends  most  of 
his    time    in    a   quaint   place   in   the   Basses 


I—    o 

O  : 

n     ^ 


THE  MEN  OF  LETTERS.  105 

Pyrenncs.  where  he  has  a  beautiful  Moorish 
house. 

M.  Edmond  Rostand  is  rather  a  pupil  of 
Leconte  de  Lisle  than  a  symbolist.  I  fancy 
his  immense  success  in  Paris  has  come  not 
only  from  the  fact  that  he  was  born  a  poet  and 
a  dramatist,  but  that  he  fell  in  with  a  dawning- 
wave  of  tendencies  in  the  jniblic.  There  is  an 
underlying  current  against  naturalism,  end-of- 
the-century-isni;  a  leaning  towards  the  old 
literature  of  noble  emotions — movement,  lofty 
ideals,  pathos  and  fire,  such  as  we  find  in  Cy- 
rano. Look  at  the  i)opularity  in  America 
of  a  certain  sort  of  historical  novel  just  now. 
Coquelin,  clever  man  that  he  is,  foresaw  this — 
he  told  me  so — he  made  up  his  mind  that  the 
time  had  come  for  a  theatre  of  the  old 
drama  of  emotion  and  action,  and  the  success 
of  the  Porte  St.  Martin  proves  his  far-seeing 
intelligence.  M.  Rostand  is  a  man  of  great  es- 
prit. "'I  don't  see  why  the  Americans  want  to 
claim  Cyrano,"  he  said  at  the  time  of  the  suit 
against  him  for  having  plagiarized  an  .Amer- 
ican. "They  have  already  taken  so  much  from 
Spain."  M.  Rostand  married  a  charming- 
poetess  named  Rosemond  (lirard,  whom  he 
heard  recite  some  of  her  own  verses  at  an 
evening  party  and  fell  in  love  with  at  first 
sight. 

The  pendulum  of  reaction  has  swung  as  far 
as  possible  in  France  in  Joris  Karl  Tduysmans. 


io6  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

In  the  beginning  he  was  a  naturalist,  one  of 
the  Medan  men  who  became  famous  through 
the  most  brutal  and  cynical  novels  possible, 
like  La-Bas  or  A  Rcbours,  with  a  hero  like 
the  decadent  des  Esseintes;  a  type  that 
was  said  to  be  drawn  from  the  decadent 
poet  Comte  Robert  de  Montesquieu.  Then 
he  suddenly  surprised  the  world  by  writ- 
ing En  Route,  in  which  he  depicted  the 
pure  joys  of  the  Trappist  fathers,  and  La 
CatJiedralc,  which  showed  the  great  beauty  of 
faith  manifested  in  the  Cathedral  of  Chartres. 
When  he  was  retired  from  the  Ministry  of 
the  Interior  he  built  a  little  house  under  the 
shadow  of  the  Abbaye  of  Ligurge,  where  he 
lived  for  several  years  a  semi-monastic  exist- 
ence. He  has  just  entered  into  novitiate 
to  become  a  Benedictine  monk.  Those  who 
knew  him  intimately  foresaw  this.  While  he 
was  yet  in  the  Government  religious  objects 
rubbed  elbows  with  profane  in  his  tiny  apart- 
ment in  the  Rue  de  Seine;  a  reliquary  contain- 
ing a  bone  of  St.  Lidwine  was  side  by  side 
with  Forain's  drawings,  and  he  used  to  say: 
"The  field  of  naturalism  is  too  limited.  It  con- 
fines itself  to  the  seven  capital  sins." 

M.  Huysmans  will  not  be  cloistered,  but  will 
belong  to  a  sort  of  third  order  called  the  Obla- 
ture,  and  still  live  in  the  house  and  garden  he 
built  himself.  Certainly,  this  will  be  one  of  the 
strangest  sights  to  the  people  of  the  end  of  the 


THE  ME.\'  Of  LETTERS.  107 

twentieth  century  to  look  back  upon;  this 
man  of  brilliant  talent  shut  up  in  the  ivory 
tower  of  his  cloister,  of  which  each  capital  is 
dedicated  to  a  saint  and  decorated  wdth  mys- 
tic symbols,  the  capital  of  St.  Francis  of  As- 
sisi  with  a  cord  and  a  violet  leaf,  that  of  St. 
Lidwine  with  a  rose  leaf,  St  Martin  with  a 
horseshoe  and  a  viper,  St.  Benoit  with  a 
medal,  a  raven  and  an  oak  leaf.  And 
in  the  garden  the  new  Benedictine  revives  the 
herbs  and  flowers  of  the  old  books;  the  medic- 
inal plants  which,  according  to  the  poem,  Hor- 
tiihis,  a  good  abbe  of  the  ninth  cen- 
tury cultivated  in  his  cloister,  twenty-three  in 
all,  liturgical  and  medicinal. 

And  besides  this,  the  twentieth  century 
will  look  back  on  those  two  brothers  who  sign 
themselves  J.-H.  Rosny,  and  write  together 
like  the  Goncourts,  of  whom  they  w-ere  the 
warm  friends  and  disciples.  The  preface  of  one 
of  their  last  books,  Vlmpcricusc  Boiitc,  states 
clearly  their  aim:  "Here  is  a  book  entirely 
consecrated  to  telling  the  effort  of  man  to  love 
his  neighbor  in  great  suffering  and  great  mis- 
ery. Do  not  seek  in  it  either  a  philosophical 
or  a  social  thesis;  and,  nevertheless,  it  is  not 
one  of  those  subjects  which  leave  the  soul  im- 
prisoned in  a  dream  of  glacial  beauty,  nor  in 
the  narrow  ivory  tower  of  art  for  art's  sake. 
It  is  too  steeped  in  poor  humanity  for  that,  too 
palpitating  with  the  sobs  of  human  beings.     II- 


io8  P/IRIS   AS    IT   fS. 

luminated  by  a  single  ray  of  genius,  it  might 
liavc  troubled  profoundly  millions  of  souls,  agi- 
tated an  elite,  and  collaborated  towards  the 
formation  of  a  new  moral  state  of  things."  The 
Rosnys  treat  altruism  as  a  force;  a  "force  in 
which  the  highest  intelligences  and  the  firmest 
wills  may  find  as  fecund  a  development  as  in 
science  or  in  art;*"  and  their  next  book,  they 
announce,  they  propose  to  devote  to  the  broad, 
general  and  socialistic  devotion  of  the  individ- 
ual to  the  masses. 

The  MM.  Rosny  are  to  me  by  far  the  most 
interesting  of  the  French  men  of  letters  to-day. 
They  are  obscure;  they  will  never  foimd  a 
school;  but  possibly  it  is  they  who  voice  the 
tendencies  of  the  coming  literature.  The  old 
"art  for  art's  sake"  has  certainly  gone  by.  The 
new  literature  will  certainly  be  creative,  but 
will  it  bring  about  a  new  order  of  society 
based  on  the  socialistic  devotion  of  the  indi- 
vidual to  the  masses? 


The  Restatcra7tts. 

Tlie  art  of  the  cuisine  is  in  decadence,  the 
old  chefs  will  tell  you,  in  Paris,  and  yet  the 
vogue  of  the  Paris  restaurants  remains  un- 
changed. 

This  is  because  they  still  hold  society. 
None  of  the  things  which  are  really  character- 
istic of  Paris — not  the  Opera,  nor  the  Salons, 
nor  the  Private  Views,  nor  the  Horse  Show, 
nor  the  races,  nor  the  restaurants,  exist  alone 
for  what  they  are  in  themselves,  but  for  what 
they  mean  as  social  institutions.  Their  im- 
portance comes  largely  from  their  social  pres- 
tige, and  when  they  lose  that,  they  generally 
drop  into  oblivion.  This  is  particularly  true 
of  a  restaurant.  There  is  always  one  where, 
at  the  hour  of  supper,  after  the  closing  of  the 
theatres,  you  are  sure  to  find  the  society 
men  and  women  and  the  grand  seigneurs  of 
art  and  letters  of  tout-Paris,  and  the  Prinzes- 
sen,  Comtessen  and  Serene  Altessen  of  other 
countries  who  are  passing  through,  and  those 
Grand  Dukes  who,  it  is  said,  were  at  the  bot- 
tom of  the  Franco-Russian  alliance — that 
they  might  have  a  play-ground  in  Paris  and 
without  pay — and  the  kings,  if  there  be  any 
109 


no  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

kings  within  the  city  walls,  and  the  feminine 
celebrities  of  all  sorts,  without  which  such  a 
place  is  nothing;  the  spot  in  which  Fashion  in 
general  at  that  particular  moment  is  holding 
her  court — in  default  of  other  courts — and 
that  will  be  the  restaurant,  and  no  other. 

In  all  this  there  seems  to  be  nothing  of  the 
old  art  of  the  cuisine  and  of  its  traditions  in 
which  we  hear  of  a  chef  like  Vatel,  who  com- 
mitted suicide  because  the  tide  was  late  and 
the  fish  was  wanting  for  his  patron's  table,  or 
Careme,  who  retired  from  his  royal  master's 
service  because  he  was  misunderstood.  "I 
composed  for  him,"  said  Careme,  bitterly, 
speaking  of  George  the  Fourth,  "a  longe  dc 
veaii  en  surprise.  He  ate  it,  but  he  could  not 
comprehend  it."  And  then  the  great  chef 
"rendered  his  apron,"  as  the  expression  is  in 
the  language  of  his  craft.  It  is  equivalent, 
in  this  case  at  least,  to  saying  that  he  "ren- 
dered his  last  breath."  Remarkable  dishes 
may  be  composed  by  great  chefs  for  these 
fashionable  supper  restaurants;  but  if  they 
are,  they  are  not  what  we  hear  of  when  these 
are  talked  about. 

One  of  the  principal  characteristics  of  the 
fashionable  restaurant,  in  fact,  is  that  no 
cuisine,  however  good,  will  ever  be  enough  to 
make  it  keep  its  vogue  for  more  than  two 
seasons  in  succession.  In  no  other  court  has 
fashion  ever  found  herself  so  unrestrained,  so 


THE    RESTAURANTS.  m 

free  to  follow  out  the  capriciousness  and  love 
of  change  which  are  her  strongest  traits.  So 
she  flits  now  to  one  place,  now  to  another. 
Last  year  the  world  was  at  Paillard's.  This 
season  it  suddenly  left  the  boulevards  and 
fiew  down  the  Avenue  de  I'Opera  to  the  new  ■ 
Cafe  de  Paris  which  had  just  risen,  with  newly 
decorated  wings,  from  the  ashes  of  its  faded 
self.  Where  will  it  be  another  season?  You 
might  just  as  well  ask  me  what  will  be  the 
mode  in  bonnets  in  the  year  2000.  Anyone 
who  goes  to  Paris  and  wants  to  sup  at  the 
cafe  in  vogue,  unless  he  have  some  friend 
sufficiently  in  the  movement  to  tell  him  just 
what  one  it  is  at  the  moment,  has  only  one 
resource  left  to  him.  He  must  start  out  and 
hunt  till  he  comes  upon  it. 

How  many  a  disappointment  would  be 
spared  the  unsophisticated  traveler  if  he  only 
knew  this  particular  feature  of  Paris  life!  He 
goes  abroad,  perhaps,  in  the  reign  of  Felix 
Faure,  and  on  getting  to  the  French  capital, 
and  being  taken  some  evening  after  the  thea- 
tre to  the  restaurant  in  fashion,  finds  it  the 
m.ost  brilliant  and  amusing  place  he  has  ever 
seen  in  his  life.  It  is  full  of  exquisitely 
dressed  women — those  for  whom  the  great 
artists  of  the  mode  create  and  have  their 
being — and  with  distinguished-looking  men 
wearing  decorations,  and  with  other  men 
and  women,  less  distinguished  in  appearance, 


112  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

but  who  have  about  them  that  grand  air 
which  is  a  sort  of  mysterious  family  Hkeness 
between  people  who  are  personages.  And 
then  La  Belle  Otero  comes  in  from  the  Folies 
Bergeres  with  her  train  of  followers;  and  then 
the  rival  beauty,  Liane  de  Pougy,  with  her 
court,  and  la  Cavalieri;  and  then  it  is  a  Prince 
of  Siam,  or  the  Grand  Dukes,  or  the  English 
Prime  Minister,  or  the  latest  bride  of  the 
latest  titled  marriage — perhaps  the  only  one 
among  them  all  that  the  traveler  recognizes, 
for  her  face  has  been  thrust  before  him  in 
every  illustrated  paper  he  has  lately  had  from 
home.  Of  everything  that  he  finds  on  his 
travels,  this  is  what  pleases  him  most,  and 
when  he  goes  back  he  tells  every  one  he  sees 
that  when  they  are  in  Paris  they  must  be 
sure  to  take  supper  at  this  particular  cafe; 
which  I  have  known  of  his  pronouncing  so  as 
to  rhyme  with  safe. 

Then,  perhaps  two  years  later,  in  the  reign 
of  fimile  Loubet,  he  comes  again,  and  brings 
with  him  some  of  the  very  people  to  whom 
he  has  vaunted  these  splendors,  and,  when 
he  goes  to  find  them,  they  have  as  completely 
vanished  as  a  vision  summoned  up  by  Alad- 
din's lamp.  Possibly  the  restaurant  is  entirely 
empty;  or,  if  it  be  a  place  like  the  Grand  Cafe, 
it  is  filled  with  peaceful  bourgeois,  drinking 
grogs  with  a  seriousness  which  suggests 
latent  thoughts  of  rheumatism,  or  tourists  in 


THE   RESTAURANTS.  113 

traveling  tweeds,  or  tranquil  individuals  play- 
ing dominoes.  .\nd  then  the  traveler  begins 
to  talk  about  "changed  Paris"  and  to  sigh  for 
the  good  old  days  of  Felix  Faure,  just  as  Du 
Maurier  sighed  for  the  good  old  pre-Imperial 
days,  and  as  we  all  of  us  sigh  for  the  "there 
that  is  never  here"  when  we  come  back  and 
do  not  find  things  exactly  as  we  left  them; 
without  taking  the  trouble  to  reflect  that  this 
old  world  of  ours,  so  far  as  its  human  beings 
and  their  occupations  and  anmsements  are 
concerned,  has  gone  on  in  pretty  much  the 
same  way  for  six  thousand  years,  and  prob- 
ably has  not  selected  that  particular  moment 
of  its  history  to  change,  even  though  it  may 
have  moved  on. 

Living  in  Paris  gives  you  one  secret  of  this 
m.oving  on  from  one  fashionable  restaurant 
to  another;  and  that  is,  that  the  women  who 
invariably  make  the  reputation  of  such  places 
are  always  seeking  for  themselves  some  new 
cadre — some  new  framework  for  their  beauty. 
Women  of  the  world  go  to  these  restaurants, 
but  no  woman  of  society  ever  "makes"  one. 
Their  vogue  is  always  given  by  that  certain 
part  of  the  feminine  sex  whom  I  once  heard 
characterized  by  a  little  American  woman 
in  Paris  as  "so  many  charming-looking  ladies 
to  whom  one  could  never  speak."  The  am- 
bition of  these  just  now  is  to  appear  dis- 
tinguished— to   be    noticeable   for    quiet    ele- 


TI4  P.4RIS    AS    IT    IS. 

gance  in  toilette  and  bearing,  so  that  they 
carry  about  with  them  an  air  of  the  whole 
world  instead  of  the  half;  but  change  they 
must  have.  If  last  season's  cafe  had  Moorish 
decorations,  that  of  this  year  must  be  some- 
thing as  far  as  possible  removed  from  it; 
Louis  XVI.,  perhaps,  with  a  background  of 
mirrors  painted  with  vines  and  flowers  and 
dainty  cupids,  such  as  wandered  over  the 
walls  of  the  boudoir  of  Alarie  Antoinette. 

Where  then,  this  time,  are  the  old  tradi- 
tions of  the  cuisine  Fran^aise?  I  hear  some 
one  ask,  and  of  that  table  w^hich  one  of  the 
most  delicate  and  subtle  writers  of  our  day 
has  said  "was  more  entertaining  than 
scenery,"  and  that  it  "probably  had  more 
devotees  than  love."  "Do  you  give  in  that 
you  are  any  the  less  immortal  for  that?"  he 
added.  "To  detect  the  flavor  of  an  oHve  is 
no  less  a  piece  of  human  perfection  than  to 
find  beauty  in  the  colors  of  a  simset."  It  was 
of  this  very  traditional  cuisine  that  I  was 
talking  a  few  evenings  ago  to  a  French 
friend  of  much  experience  in  dinners,  and 
erudition  on  all  subjects.  "Be  good  enough 
to  tell  me  just  what  you  mean  by  tradi- 
tions," he  answered.  "For  instance,  in  the 
time  of  Louis  XIII.  all  the  dishes  were 
perfumed  with  musk.  But  that,  I  fear,  would 
not  appeal  to  people  nowadays.  And  then,  a 
great  many  things  that  used  to  be  eaten  have 


testaurant    Ledoyen. 


Salon  in  the  Cafe  de  Paris. 


THE    RESTAURANTS.  115 

disappeared  from  the  table  entirely.  During 
the  Renaissance  the  principal  delicacies  were 
heron  and  peacock,  the  latter  served  sur- 
rounded by  its  beautiful  tail.  What  sort  of 
traditions  do  you  mean?" 

"The  traditions  of  which  you  are  always 
hearing,"  I  said,  "the  old  cuisine  in  distinction 
from  what  are  called  the  'creations'  of  the 
modern  chefs  of  to-day,  like  'pressed  duck,' 
for  instance — the  caneton  dc  Roiicn  a  la  prcssc. 
That,  I  suppose,  is  decidedly  an  invention  of 
our  time." 

"Pressed  duck  is  very  old,"  he  said;  "that 
is,  I  think  it  is  about  a  century  old.  I  know 
they  ate  it  in  Rouen  fifty  years  ago.  They 
have  all  kinds  of  specialties  in  the  old  cuisine 
of  Proz'cnce;  they  have  dishes  that  are  ex- 
quisite." 

This  is  as  near  as  I  ever  come  to  hav- 
ing defined  for  me  exactly  what  is  meant  by 
the  old  French  cuisine.  I  know  that  when  I 
am  invited  to  dinners  given  at  certain  res- 
taurants I  take  a  subtle  pleasure  in  the  repast 
which  I  am  told  comes  from  old  traditions, 
and  when  I  dine  at  others  I  take  an  equally 
subtle  pleasure — one  that  is  said  to  be  the 
result  of  the  cuisine  of  a  chef  who  is  a  "cre- 
ator." IMy  own  traditions  of  French  cooking 
contain  nothing  but  roasts,  and  are  got  prin- 
cipally from  old  books;  such  books,  for  in- 
stance,  as   Anatole    France's   "Rotisserie   de 


116  PARIS    AS    IT   IS. 

la  Reine  Pedauque."  In  that  the  father  is  an 
"excellent  roaster  who  fears  God,"  and  on 
feast  days  carries  the  roasters'  banner,  em- 
broidered with  a  St.  Laurence,  with  his  grid- 
iron, and  a  golden  palm.  This  was  over  a 
hundred  years  ago,  and  it  speaks  of  a  time 
when  the  preparation  of  food,  in  general,  was 
elevated  into  a  profession  which  was  dignified 
and  picturesque.  The  foundations  of  nearly 
all  the  French  cuisine  of  to-day  were  laid  at 
that  period,  I  fancy,  and  what  the  famous  old 
restaurants  do  is  to  hand  down  its  prin- 
ciples from  generation  to  generation,  adding 
to  them  and  perfecting  them  as  they  go  along, 
but  never  going  outside  of  them. 

This  is  the  case  with  such  old  houses  as 
the  Cafe  .Anglais  and  the  2^Iaison  Doree  on 
the  Boulevards,  or  Voisin's  in  the  Rue  St. 
Honore.  In  these  three  there  is  a  continuity 
of  traditions,  if  not  from  father  to  son,  at 
least  from  chef  to  tmder-chef.  If  3^ou  want 
to  know  what  this  means,  linger  long  enough 
over  your  cofTee  some  day  at  the  Maison 
Doree  to  let  the  place  empty,  and  then 
have  a  little  talk  with  the  old  maitre  d'hotel. 
Gustave,  who  has  been  thirty-three  years  with 
the  house.  He  will  approach  the  subject  with 
something  of  the  solemnity  with  which  Fran- 
cisque  Sarcey  talked  of  the  Comedie  Fran- 
gaise.  Gustave  has  one  gesture  when  he 
wishes  to  be  particularly  impressive,   a   cir- 


THE   RESTAURANTS.  u? 

cular  wave  of  the  hand  ending  with  the  fore- 
finger in  the  air.  This  is  particularly  in 
evidence  when  he  speaks  of  some  of  the 
new  restaurants  in  vogue.  "It  is  art  in 
decadence!"  T  heard  him  say  lately.  "What 
can  you  expect  of  a  restaurant  which  has  no 
cellar?  A  wine-cellar  must  be  at  least  fifty 
years  old.  Wine  is  like  a  woman.  It  takes  a 
start  of  at  least  twenty  years  to  make  a  wo- 
man. And  then  all  people  think  of  nowadays 
is  the  name.  A  piece  of  duck  with  a  sauce  put 
to  it  and  called  somethin.ij  a  la  Bernhardt,  or 
a  la  Loie  Fuller,  is  nothing  but  the  same 
piece  of  duck,  n'est-ce-pas?  (forefinger  very 
much  en  I'air).  It  is  no  better  for  that.  Eat  a 
morsel  of  duck  roasted  here,  'a  la  broche,'  as 
they  did  it  fifty  years  ago,  when  M.  Cassimir 
first  came  into  the  house,  with  a  glass  of  our 
good  old  wine,  or  eat  it  at  the  Maison  Voisin, 
and  see  if  any  name  could  make  it  any  bet- 
ter." 

I  ventured  to  remark  to  Gustave  that  I 
had  heard  his  good  old  wines,  as  well  as  his 
dinner,  were  unduly  dear;  and  this  seemed 
to  hurt  his  feelings. 

"That  is  because  people  do  not  know  how 
to  order,"  he  answered  indignantly.  "It  is  sad 
to  see  men  commanding  dinners  who  have 
no  instinct  for  composing  a  menu.  They 
order  a  tort  or  a  travers,  with  no  harmony  in 
their  compositions,  and  spend  five  times  as 


ii8  PARIS    AS    IT   IS. 

much  as  they  need.  Let  them  come  to  me, 
and  I  will  cause  them  to  dine  well  without 
spending  so  much  as  a  louis — yes,  and  they 
will  drink  good  wine,  too." 

Nothing  casts  a  deeper  shade  of  melancholy 
over  a  factotum  of  an  old  restaurant  like  this 
than  to  see  customers  running  against  all 
their  ideas  of  taste  in  their  orders.  "So  Lord 
Lyons  has  arrived!"  the  old  French  chef  of 
the  Brevoort  House  would  say  delightedly  in 
the  old  days  when  this  famous  gourmet  was 
coming  to  New  York.  The  cook  always  rec- 
ognized his  hand  in  the  superior  menus  which 
came  down. 

The  charm  of  a  Paris  restaurant  comes  not 
only  from  the  table,  but  also  from  an  aesthetic 
pleasure  given  in  the  way  things  are  served, 
and  the  surroundings.  I  imagine  food  is  just 
as  exquisitely  prepared  in  many  other  cities; 
but  nowhere  else  is  it  made  so  generally  en- 
tertaining. The  man  at  the  head  of  a  leading 
Paris  restaurant,  who  is  always  more  or  less 
of  an  artist,  is  past-master  in  getting  effects 
from  his  resources;  the  brilliant  white  of  his 
linen,  the  iridescence  of  his  crystals,  the  pure 
intensity  of  his  reds, the  delicacy  of  his  greens, 
the  whole  gamut  of  beautiful  tones  in  be- 
tween. His  sensitive,  cultivated  eye  is  con- 
stantly seeking  new  combinations,  and  the 
successful  restaurant  always  has  his  personal- 
ity in  it.     This  is  so  essential  to  its  success 


THE   RESTAURANTS.  119 

that  no  restaurant  ever  keeps  its  vogue  if  it 
loses  this  special  sort  of  individuality.  As  an 
instance  of  this,  take  the  old  Cafe  Anglais.  It 
is  just  as  well-ordered  at  present  as  in  the 
days  of  its  highest  popularity:  its  delicious 
cuisine  has  in  no  way  changed;  but  you  never 
see  a  cat  there,  as  the  saying  is.  simply  be- 
cause the  restaurant  has  passed  into  the 
hands  of  an  English  syndicate.  It  is  a  house 
without  a  host. 

The  Duval  restaurants,  scattered  all  over 
Paris,  illustrate  this  same  principle.  They  are 
cheap,  it  is  true;  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  there 
is  no  place  in  town  where  you  can  find  certain 
dishes  in  greater  perfection.  An  American 
painter  whom  I  know,  of  broad  experience  in 
the  delicate  art  of  dining,  tells  me  that  he  has 
been  in  the  habit,  for  the  last  ten  years,  of 
going  now  and  then  to  the  head  restaurant 
Duval,  in  the  Rue  Montesquieu,  to  eat  a  filct 
de  bcenf  with  sauce  Bcarnaisc.  He  always  finds 
it  the  same,  and  perfect.  It  is  evidently  al- 
ways cooked  by  the  same  chef,  for  the  blush 
of  red  in  the  centre  never  changes  its  size. 
This  dish  costs  at  Duval's  ninety-five  cen- 
times, and  an  excellent  "grave  superieur"  to 
go  with  it.  with  a  real  bouquet,  can  be  got  for 
one  franc  twenty-five.  You  wonder  why  all 
Paris  does  not  go  there,  but  tlierc  is  no 
aesthetic  pleasure  to  be  got  at  the  Bouillon 
Duval.     For  the  Frenchman  the  solid  break 


i2«  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

in  business  hours  in  the  middle  of  the  day  is 
something  more  than  a  mere  opportunity  for 
taking  fuel.  His  dejeuner  is  an  ordered  and 
interesting  function,  from  which  he  expects 
to  get  some  sort  of  an  inspiration  for  going 
through  the  rest  of  the  day.  I  might  say, 
however,  in  speaking  of  a  Bouillon  Duval, 
that  it  is  one  of  the  few  places  in  Paris  where 
women  can  go  alone. 

Any  study  of  the  psychology  of  the  Paris 
restaurant  would  be  quite  incomplete  unless 
some  account  were  taken  of  a  certain  yielding 
in  all  of  them  to  end-of-the-century  tendencies. 
You  find  even  the  gravest  of  the  old  steady- 
goers  making  concessions  to  the  demand  of 
to-day  for  "features;"  just  as  every  now  and 
then  we  open  one  of  our  old  magazines  to 
come  with  a  little  start  upon  some  frankly 
journalistic  article,  with  illustrations  per- 
ceptibly leaning  toward  sensationalism. 

Nearly  all  the  restaurants  now  go  in  for 
specialties.  They  always  did.  for  that  matter; 
but  these  are  much  more  in  evidence  to-day. 
At  Voisin's  you  will  hear  of  their  "chaud 
froids,"  their  special  terrines  of  pate-de-foie- 
gras,  their  lilet  with  "sauce  Choron,"  named 
after  an  old  chef  who  was  with  the  house 
thirty  years.  Durand,  the  famous  Durand  of 
Boulanger  repute,  makes  a  specialty  of  eggs. 
He  serves  some  eighty  different  dishes  of 
them,  and  you  can  breakfast  and  dine  there 


THE   RESTAURANTS.  121 

every  day  of  the  week  and  have  eight 
courses  at  each  meal,  with  eggs  at  every 
course,  yet  never  have  the  same  dish  twice. 
Noel  and  Peters,  in  the  Passage  des  Princes, 
have  gone  in  for  Russian  dishes,  and  re- 
cently imported  five  Russian  chefs  from  St. 
Petersburg.  Marguery  still  lives  on  his  sotc  h 
la  Normandc,  and  holds  all  the  provinces  and 
some  of  Paris  with  it  to  such  a  degree  that  he 
keeps  thirty-two  chefs,  and  dries  and  polishes 
all  his  dishes  by  electricity.  Paillard's  and  the 
Ambassadeurs  in  the  Champs  Elysees,  with 
their  flower-hung  balconies,  ^ladrid  and 
.\rmenonville  in  the  Bois  de  Boulogne  will 
oflFer  you  all  the  features  in  cuisine  that  you 
will  find  anywhere  else;  but,  above  all,  the 
loveliness  of  their  surroundings  makes  them 
ever  fashionable,  and  the  principal  specialty 
they  have  is  that  at  any  one  of  them  you  arc 
sure  to  be  amused.  Foyot's,  the  old  restau- 
rant near  the  Luxembourg,  keeps  that  de- 
lightful air  of  tradition,  with  a  sort  of  concen- 
trated essence  of  the  schools,  the  galleries, 
and  the  Odeon  lightly  diffused  through  it 
which  always  has  for  me  such  a  special  fas- 
cination. A  French  friend  of  mine,  wife  of  a 
professor,  once  a  year  dines  en  villc  at  Foyot's 
to  celebrate  her  wedding  anniversary.  Long 
before  the  time,  she  and  her  husband  begin 
to  talk  of  the  dinner,  to  compose  the  menu,  to 
discuss  the  dishes  of  the  anniversary  before. 


122  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

to  make  up  their  minds  whether  they  will 
have  the  same  table;  and  I  never  enter  the 
door  of  Foyot's  that  I  do  not  seem  to  see 
them  sitting  there  enjoying  their  rare  pleas- 
ure, after  the  fashion  that  Charles  Lamb  and 
his  sister,  Bridget  Elia,  enjoyed  theirs  in  the 
early  days  when  everything  had  to  be 
counted,  and  when  a  purchase  was  not  simply 
a  purchase  to  them,  but  a  triumph. 

As  for  the  "features"  at  Joseph's,  in  the  Rue 
Marivaux,  and  Frederic's,  at  the  Tour  d'Ar- 
gent,  they  are  all  features.  Probably  no  man 
in  his  line  has  ever  been  so  much  sung  with 
his  arms  as  Joseph,  especially  by  Ameri- 
cans. People  talked  of  his  carving  of  a  fowl 
with  something  of  the  religious  respect  with 
which  they  mentioned  the  bowing  of  a  Sara- 
sate.  Many  a  time  have  I  seen  him  perform  the 
feat,  holding  the  bird  aloft,  poised  on  the  fork 
in  his  left  hand,  and  then  with  only  four  or 
five  passes  of  his  long,  flexible  knife  leaving 
it  wingless  and  legless.  Two  or  three  more, 
and  nothing  remained  but  a  skeleton.  These 
strokes  were  part  of  the  mysterious  rites 
which  preceded  the  eating  of  "ponlardc  a  la 
Marivaux,"  or  "Cancton  dc  Rouen  h  la  Presse." 
The  refinement  of  the  cuisine  could  go  no 
farther,  I  fancy,  than  in  the  preparation  of 
the  poularde.  When  ready  for  cooking  the 
chicken  was  w-rapped  in  the  belly  of  a  lamb, 
and  then  swathed  in  bacon  lonsr  enousfh  to  let 


THE  RESTAURANTS.  123 

the  two  impart  to  it  their  essences.  Then  it 
was  steamed  in  the  vapor  of  a  quart  bottle  of 
port  wine  and  a  pint  of  old  rye  whiskey.  Jo- 
seph has  now  gone  to  England  to  live,  and 
only  his  shade  remains  in  Paris.  He  never 
quite  got  back  the  prestige  he  lost  for  giving 
up  pure  considerations  of  art  to  accept  $10,000 
a  year  from  Mr.  Vanderbilt.  You  w^ill  hear  it 
said  of  him  that  he  has  lost  the  simplicity  of 
the  greatest  art;  that  the  dishes  at  the  res- 
taurant which  still  bears  his  name  are  too  sen- 
sational. They  have  too  many  decorations  for 
effect,  such  things  as  an  American  flag  in  the 
centre  of  the  dish,  or  lobster  claws  sticking  up 
where  claws  ought  not  to  be. 

Frederic,  at  the  Tour  d'xA.rgent,  attracts  peo- 
ple to  his  simple  little  restaurant  on  the  banks 
of  the  Seine  because  the  famous  specialty, 
''Cancton  ^  la  Prcsse,"  is  to  be  found  there  in 
its  greatest  perfection.  The  cancton,  or  young 
duckling  of  Rouen,  is  one  of  the  greatest  of 
French  delicacies.  It  is  what  most  nearly  cor- 
responds in  France  to  our  canvas-back  duck. 
A  la  presse  means  that  after  the  duck  is  carved 
the  entire  skeleton  is  put  into  a  great  silver 
press  and  crushed  before  the  very  eyes  of  the 
diner.  The  juices  in  the  bones  are  supposed  to 
give  a  particularly  delicious  flavor  to  the  sauce 
which  is  afterward  made  from  this  stock. 
To  Frederic  and  Joseph  must  be  given  the 
glory  of  developing  this  dish  to  its  present  de- 


124  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

gree  of  perfection, andgivingittheexaltedplace 
it  now  holds  in  the  cuisine  of  to-day.  Its 
story  is  interesting  as  a  document  in  cuHnar)' 
history.  In  the  early  sixties  duck  was  pressed 
in  Paris,  but  only  between  two  plates,  and  then 
not  for  everybody.  You  had  to  be  a  Roths- 
child or  a  prince  to  have  it  done  for  you;  and 
in  no  book  on  Paris  of  that  date  have  I  ever 
seen  the  dish  mentioned.  In  '68  both  Joseph 
and  Frederic,  in  two  different  houses,  were 
making  themselves  remarked  for  "caneton  a  la 
presse."  It  was  not  until  the  early  seventies 
that  the  press  of  to-day  was  invented.  What 
a  curious  bit  of  sociological  history  is  com- 
prised in  the  reminiscences  of  these  chefs!  "It 
was  in  '74,"  Frederic  told  me  once,  "that  my 
role  in  the  duck  began.  I  then  began  to 
search  in  its  juices  and  its  carcass  the  refined 
duck  that  I  serve  now.  When  M.  Paillard 
sold  me  the  'Tour  d'Argent'  I  was  searching 
still.  Only  lately  have  I  been  satisfied.  Now 
I  search  no  more." 

The  quaint  Tour  d'Argent  is  the  only  place  I 
know  of  in  Paris  where  you  can  find  now  a 
chef  who  is  representative  of  the  old  type; 
that  is  to  say,  a  man  who  is  at  once  cook, 
maitre  d'hotel  and  proprietor.  Frederic 
evolves  his  creations  in  the  watches  of 
the  night,  and  executes  them  the  next 
day  without  ever  tasting  them.  His  art 
seems  to  be  purely  intellectual.     His  famous 


THE   RESTAURANTS.  125 

"sole  a  la  cardinal,"  his  PouletMadameMackay, 
his  Homard  Alexander,  his  Oeiifs  Tuck,  his 
Beignet  Princesse  Colona,  his  Poire  IVanamaker, 
all  of  those  dishes  which  possibly  make  the 
cuisine  sensational,  but  at  least  make  it  amus- 
ing, are,  so  far  as  he  is  concerned,  pure  works 
of  the  imagination. 

Less  and  less,  however,  as  1  said  in  the  be- 
ginning, is  a  Paris  restaurant  considered  from 
anything  but  a  social  standpoint.  The  res- 
taurants are  the  last  of  the  ''salons  oii  Von 
cause."  The  art  of  conversation  is  dropping  out 
of  the  French  salons.  Music,  monologues, 
revues,  comedies,  dances,  the  whole  Bodi- 
niere,  and  perhaps  it  might  have  been  said,  in 
these  late  troublous  times,  anything  that  will 
amuse — that  would  keep  the  guests  safely  on 
neutral  ground,  is  coming  in,  but  nobody  ex- 
pects to  talk. 

An  entire  book  could  be  written  upon  the 
famous  restaurant  dinners  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century,  as  books  have  been  written  upon  the 
salons  of  the  Eighteenth.  Some  of  these  have 
come  to  be  almost  as  much  Parisian  institu- 
tions as  the  Academy.  Think  of  a  continuity 
of  dinner  traditions  that  has  lasted  for  over 
half  a  century!  The  most  famous  of  these  din- 
ners had  its  beginning  in  the  days  when  "Phil- 
Hpe's"  was  the  restaurant  a  la  mode,  in  the  time 
when  George  Sand  was  dining  at  a  cabaret 
with  Alfred  de  Musset.     A  few  brilliant  men 


126  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

got  into  the  habit  of  meeting  together  once  a 
month  for  a  dinner  at  PhilHpe's,  which  he 
called  the  "Diner  dcs  Gens  d'esprit."  "To-day 
I  have  my  gens  d'esprit,"  he  would  say. 

The  convives  called  it  simply  "The  Friday 
Dinner" — "le  diner  du  Vcndredi."'  They  met 
on  the  first  Friday  of  each  month,  and  their 
number  was  limited  to  twenty.  They  were 
of  Brillat-Savarin's  opinion  about  large  din- 
ners. People  did  not  dine,  he  said,  at  them — 
they  banqueted;  and  they  did  not  talk — they 
toasted.  In  1856,  on  the  death  of  M.  Bixio,  a 
charming  and  brilliant  man,  who  had  been  the 
principal  founder  of  the  Friday  dinners,  these 
were  formally  baptized  Diner  Bixio.  At  that 
time  among  the  members,  to  quote  alphabetic- 
ally, were  such  names  as  Arago,  Augier,  Dela- 
croix, Dumas,  pere;  Halevy,  Messionier,  Pros- 
per Merimee,  and  the  actor  Regnier.  Nearly 
every  celebrated  Frenchman  has  been  of  the 
number  since. 

In  March,  1898,  the  list  of  members  in- 
cluded the  Prince  d'Arenberg,  Gaston  Bois- 
sier,  Victor  Cherbuliez,  Jules  Claretie,  De- 
taille,  General  de  Gallifet,  Gerome,  Ludovic 
Halevy,  Massenet,  Pailleron,  Sardou,  Mel- 
chior  de  Vogue,  Raymond  Poincare.  The 
dinner  is  always  given  at  Voisin's,  in  that 
famous  salon  of  the  second  Empire,  the 
Grand  Seize.  What  a  record  of  the  best 
French  esprit  those  walls  could  give!     They 


THE   RESTAURANTS.  127 

have  heard  the  famous  conversations  between 
Tourgenieff  and  Alexandre  Dumas  fils,  and 
the  famous  narrations  of  that  rare  story- 
teller, the  Due  d'Aumale,  and  the  equally 
famous  repartee  of  Labiche.  One  specimen 
of  this  last  has  come  to  me. 

Labiche  had  once  owned  a  farm,  and  was 
boasting  of  the  stock  he  had  raised  on  it — 
cows  which  gave  eighteen  quarts  of  milk  a  day. 

"Eighteen  quarts  a  day,  my  dear  Labiche," 
spoke  up  a  good  Republican  present,  remem- 
bering suddenly  that  he  was  editor  of  an 
agricultural  paper.  "Eighteen  quarts;  that's 
a  good  deal!" 

"But,  you  know,  it  was  under  the  Empire!" 


The   Great  Shops. 

"Come,  Mademoiselle!"  said  the  professor 
to  the  young  girl  who  was  taking  the  examina- 
tion for  a  teacher's  certificate,  "where  was 
Charles  the  Ninth  when  he  fired  vipon  the  Hu- 
guenots on  St.  Bartholomew's  day?" 

The  unfortunate  candidate  flushed,  looked 
dazed,  and  then  suddenly  answered  triumph- 
antly:   "In  a  window  of  the  Bon  Marchcy 

The  idea  of  the  Louvre  had  evidently  gone 
through  her  mind,  but  as  the  word  Louvre 
suggested  above  everything  else  the  shop 
where  she  went  so  often,  the  equivalent  Boyi 
Marche  suggested  itself  instinctively. 

This  might  be  said  to  represent  the  frame  of 
mind  of  nearly  every  woman  in  Paris.  The 
Louvre  evokes  far  less  for  them  the  vision  of 
the  great  palace  of  galleries  than  that  of  the 
large  building  opposite  with  staring  posters 
across  its  front  bearing  such  legends  as; 
"Nouz'eautes  d'hiz'cr,''  '"Grande  Exposition  de 
Blanc"  "Saison  d'Ete."  The  left  bank  of  the 
Seine  is  symbolized  for  the  inhabitants  of  her 
right  not  nearly  so  much  by  the  Latin  Quarter 
or  even  the  aristocratic  Faubourg  St.  Ger- 
main as  by  the  gigantic  Bon  Marche,  gorged 
128 


THE   GREAT  SHOPS.  129 

not  only  with  all  the  necessities  of  life,  but 
what  Voltaire  called  more  necessary  still,  the 
superfluities.  The  Printcmps  brings  up  not 
nearly  so  much  the  blossoming  of  the  flowers 
as  sky-blue  posters  announcing  bargain  days 
for  gloves,  laces  or  silks. 

What  an  important  part  of  the  history  of  the 
Second  Empire  and  the  Tliird  Republic  would 
have  been  left  out  if  Zola  had  not  written  "An 
Bonlieur  dcs  Dames,''  the  history  of  one  of 
these  great  shops!  Tliey  are  one  of  the  most 
important  inventions  of  this  century,  most 
characteristic  of  its  sociological  evolution. 
Those  who  only  see  in  their  astonishing  pros- 
perity the  individual  genius  of  business  men 
like  Boucicaut  of  the  Bon  Marche,  Chauchard 
or  Heriot  of  the  Louvre,  Jaluzot  of  the  Prin- 
tcmps, who  came  to  Paris  in  sabots,  do  not 
look  below  the  surface  of  things  for  the  spirit 
of  the  age. 

Such  bazars  are  the  outcome  of  the  social 
necessities  of  modern  times,  in  which  the  motto 
is,  not  more  equality  for  all  than  luxury  for 
all.  They  were  inevitable  consequences  of  the 
Revolution  and  the  suppression  of  the  corpo- 
rations. In  the  First  Empire  appeared  shops 
which  soon  became  famous,  La  Fille  Mai  Gar- 
dee,  Le  Viable  Boilcux,  Le  Masque  de  Per 
or  Les  Deux  Magots.  After  the  revolution  of 
1830  they  gave  place  to  others  still  larger  and 
more  popular;   La  Belle  Fermiere,  La  Chaussee 


13©  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

d' Ant  in,  Lc  Coin  dc  La  Rue,  Le  Pauvre  Diable. 
And  at  the  same  time  two  new  types  ap- 
peared; the  clerk  and  the  "demoiselle  de  mag- 
azin,"  who  are  chaffed  in  the  popular  songs 
and  on  the  stage  as  "Calico"  and  "Mile.  Per- 
caline." 

At  the  end  of  the  Second  Empire  liberal 
ideas  made  immense  progress.  All  classes  of 
society  were  stirred  by  them,  from  the  high- 
est to  the  lowest.  In  this  last  a  little  clerk  left 
a  little  shop  to  go  into  partnership  with  the 
proprietor  of  another  little  shop  in  the  Rue  du 
Bac  called  the  ''Bon  Marchc."  His  name  was 
Aristide  Boucicaut;  and  his  was  one  of  those 
creative  minds  which  revolutionize  the  world. 
All  his  genius  lay  in  a  few  principles — to  sup- 
press bargaining  by  a  fixed  price,  to  sell  at  re- 
tail for  almost  the  same  price  as  at  wholesale 
and  make  up  the  difference  by  the  quantity  of 
the  sales;  finally,  to  interest  the  employes  in 
the  business  by  a  commission.  Seventeen 
years  later  his  house  had  swallowed  up  all  the 
immense  space  between  the  Rues  de  Sevres, 
Valpeau,  du  Bac  and  de  Babylone.  Lately  it 
has  crossed  this  last  street  and  begun  to  spread 
out  on  the  other  side,  and  the  business  it  does 
every  year  amounts  to  over  a  hundred  millions 
of  francs. 

The  Lonzre  was  founded  by  M.  Chauchard, 
a  clerk  of  the  Panvrc  Diable,  who  made  a  busi- 
ness partnership  with  M.  Heriot,  head  clerk  at 


Ihe    .\!ai4..zin   dii    I'rintcmp 


The   Bon    Marchti   and    Square. 
TWO  GREAT  FRENCH  DEPARTMENT  STORES. 


THE   GREAT  SHOPS.  131 

the  silk  counter  of  the  Villc  dc  Paris,  whom  he 
got  to  know  through  the  intermediary  of  his 
barber.  They  only  applied  the  same  ideas, 
which  proves  that  they  were  in  the  air.  Now 
M.  Chauchard  is  one  of  the  French  million- 
aires, and  best  known  as  the  owner  of  the  pic- 
ture gallery  which  is  the  most  difficult  of  ac- 
cess in.  Paris.  It  contains  Millet's  Angelus. 
And  all  over  town  in  each  quarter  other  great 
shops  have  sprung  up.  miniatures  of  the  fa- 
mous ones;  the  Sajiiarifainc,  the  Place  Clicliy, 
the  Pharcs  dc  la  Bastille,  the  Tapis  Rouge,  the 
Soldaf  Laborcnr,  etc. 

The  Louvre  and  the  Bon  Marchc  alone  have 
put  feverish  activity  into  great  looms  and  great 
industries  all  over  France.  Not  only  have  they 
put  new  life  into  the  silks  of  Lyons,  the  laces 
of  Puy  and  of  Calais,  the  glove  manufactories 
of  Grenoble  and  of  Chaumont  (1,500,000  pairs 
of  gloves  are  sold  every  year  at  the  Bon 
Marchc  alone),  the  woods  of  Roubaix  and  of 
Rheims,  the  draperies  of  Sedan  and  Elbcuf. 
the  linen  of  the  Vosges,  of  Cambrai  and  of 
Armentieres.  but  they  have  founded  whole 
new  industries.  The  Louvre  has  carried  to 
St.  Etienne  the  manufacture  of  certain  foreign 
velvets,  has  replaced  the  toys  of  Nuremberg 
by  French  toys,  and  has  created  in  the  Hautes 
Pyrenees,  where  there  is  the  beautiful  Pyre- 
nees  wool,    the   old    industry     of   knitting   of 


132  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

which  BerUn  and  Kremnitz  only  fifteen  years 
ago  had  the  monopoly. 

These  great  shops  have  had  still  another  im- 
portant influence  in  France.  They  have  had 
much  more  effect  than  you  would  imagine  on 
the  relations  between  labor  and  capital.  The 
spectacle  of  these  immense  organizations  in 
which  all  the  gains  are  divided  mathematically 
between  all  the  employes  in  direct  proportion 
to  their  activity  has  gained  many  minds  to  col- 
lectivism. The  Bon  Marchc,  for  instance,  in 
one  sense  of  the  word  constitutes  a  perfect  lit- 
tle socialistic  republic.  It  is  governed  by  a 
triumvirate  of  directors  chosen  from  among 
its  own  members,  who  have  mounted  suc- 
cessively every  round  of  the  ladder  for  a  term 
of  three  years, and  are  ineligible  for  reelection. 
Every  employe  receives  not  only  a  salary,  but 
a  percentage  of  the  yearly  profits.  The  house 
has  a  restaurant  on  the  top  floor,  where  its 
employes  are  fed;  it  has  comfortable  dormi- 
tories where  they  live.  This  vision  has  gained 
many  minds  to  socialism.  They  forget  that 
this  Republic  is  made  up  of  chosen  individ- 
uals, and  that  an  undesirable  employe  is  put 
out  of  it  at  the  very  beginning.  This  process 
of  discrimination  would  be  very  difficult  for  a 
State. 

As  to  the  part  these  great  shops  have  played 
in  the  evolution  of  manners  in  Paris,  it  would 
certainly  make  a  curious  study.     One  simple 


THE  GREAT  SHOPS.  133 

little  custom  introduced  by  the  Bon  Marche 
has  had  a  most  important  ethical  influence  on 
the  modern  French  teminine  mind.  This  is 
its  practice  of  allowing  customers  to  send 
goods  home  to  be  examined  at  leisure,  and 
paid  for  only  if  they  are  kept.  A  great  many 
women  with  no  money  at  all  in  this  way  give 
themselves  the  illusion  of  having  large  for- 
tunes. They  enter  this  palace  full  of  treasures, 
have  the  joy  of  handling  and  choosing  them, 
and  sending  home  the  value  of  several  hun- 
dred francs'  worth — francs  which  they  have 
not  got.  These  they  keep  for  three  or  four 
days  and  then  return,  or  keep  only  a  trifle.  We 
have  all  seen  entire  families  going  to  the  circus 
to  take  one  small  child,  and  I  have  known  of 
a  woman's  flanking  one  modest  saucepan  of 
which  she  was  in  need  with  seven  hundred 
francs'  worth  of  laces,  underlinen  and  bibelots 
she  had  no  intention  of  buying  at  all.  She 
takes  at  the  door  that  little  book  of  numbers 
which  facilitates  shopping  to  such  an  extraor- 
dinary degree,  and  when  she  admires  anything 
has  only  to  hand  this  to  the  clerk  and  let  him 
put  on  the  number  to  feel  that  it  is  hers.  What 
a  strangely  constructed  intellect  it  must  be  that 
gets  pleasure  from  this  sort  of  thing.  It  must 
be  of  the  same  species  as  that  of  the  woman 
who  could  not  believe  that  her  bank  account 
was  exhausted  because  her  book  was  still  half 
full  of  checks. 


134  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

The  Bon  Marchc  is  a  close  student  of  the 
feminine  character,  as  women  sometimes  find 
out  to  their  sorrow.  One  in  modest  circum- 
stances who  had  given  herself  the  illusion  of 
luxury  by  having  a  very  elegant  fur  cape  sent 
home,  when  she  went  to  return  it  was  met  with 
the  statement:  "Unfortunately,  madam,  we 
cannot  take  this  back.  An  employe  of  the 
house  sat  directly  behind  you  yesterday  at  a 
wedding  and  saw  you  wearing  it."  I  have  al- 
ways wondered  what  the  sequel  was,  and  if  it 
was  one  of  those  feminine  tragedies  we  some- 
times find  in  French  literature.  Do  you  re- 
member the  story — was  it  by  Guy  de  Maupas- 
sant— where  the  woman  borrowed  a  friend's 
diamond  necklace  to  wear  to  a  ball  and  lost 
it,  and  returned  a  fac-simile  of  it?  She 
and  her  husband  impoverished  themselves, 
ran  into  debt,  and  spent  all  their  lives 
making  this  up.  Finally,  when  they  were 
old  and  gray  they  met  the  friend  and 
told  her  the  story.  She  burst  into  tears. 
"Why,  my  dear,  the  diamonds  were  paste!" 
she  said.  I  always  imagine  the  woman  of  the 
fur  cape  not  telling  her  husband,  and  then  hav- 
ing to  skimp  and  save  out  of  her  allowance  for 
indefinite  years,  for  the  French  women  always 
have  allowances.  The  family  income  is  always 
tithed  religiously  among  people  in  ordinary 
circumstances,  and  in  the  expense  books  you 
will  find  awful  little  tables  giving  calculations 


THE   GREAT  SHOPS.  135 

for  thrifty  housewives — and  they  are  nearly  all 
thrifty  in  France;  a  family  with  an  income  of 
10,000  francs  should  spend  so  much  for  rent, 
so  much  for  food,  so  much  for  pleasures,  and 
so  on.  How  could  the  great  shops  combat  all 
this  system  except  with  immense  temptations? 
They  do  not  seem  to  me  such  dangerously 
seductive  places  as  the  great  American  shops. 
They  have  not  the  same  distinction.  Go  into  a 
New  York  shop  at  the  dawning  of  a  season 
and  you  will  feel  that  the  things  so  daintily 
displayed  everywhere  are  going  to  be  worn 
by  the  most  distinguished  women  through- 
out the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land. 
You  do  not  get  that  sensation  at  the  Louvre 
or  the  Bon  Marchc.  As  they  are  great  level- 
ers,  the  dressmakers  are  always  trying  to  keep 
their  models  and  materials  out  of  them,  and  as 
Paris  is  the  centre  of  supplies,  even  the  hum- 
blest dressmaker  sells  her  materials.  You 
gain  nothing  in  buying  yourself,  because  she 
saves  the  middleman.  The  great  shops  in  New- 
York  are  importers  of  both  dresses  and  stuffs, 
and  have  the  best  fashions.  The  great  shops 
in  France  may  dress  the  provinces.  They  do 
not  dress  Paris.  You  never  get  a  style  there 
until  after  it  has  been  popularized,  and  there- 
fore commonized. 

But  what  a  delight  is  the  sensation  they  give 
you  of  the  shop's  being  made  for  woman,  and 
not  woman  for  the  shop.      Their  amiability, 


136  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

their  obligingness,  is  unbounded.  Have  you 
bought  two  or  three  yards  of  dotted  muslin, 
for  instance,  to  cover  your  dressing-table,  and 
then  decided  you  do  not  want  it?  Take 
the  muslin  back  and  the  money  will  be  re- 
funded to  you.  The  shop  likes  to  have  you 
think  yourself  economical,  and  it  must  have 
you  satisfied.  Moreover,  it  is  always  trust- 
worthy and  sincere.  All  the  shops  are  large 
importers  of  Oriental  stufifs  and  curios;  the 
Bon  Marchc  is  one  of  the  largest  in  the  world. 
You  can  often  "junk"  there  with  satisfaction. 
The  great  shops  play  their  part  in  the  pag- 
eants of  the  capital.  At  least  once  a  year  femi- 
nine Paris  rises  early  in  the  morning  and  goes 
over  to  the  Bon  Marchc  lace  sale  in  February. 
It  is  the  first  suggestion  of  spring;  the  great 
place  blossoming  with  lilacs,  crocuses,  ane- 
mones and  violets — artificial,  to  be  sure,  but 
the  exquisite  artificiality  of  the  French — and 
masses  of  stuffs,  ribbons  and  gloves  strewn 
everywhere  in  the  most  intelligent  disorder, 
and  the  most  artistic  spring  harmonies.  On 
the  twentieth  of  March,  the  legendary  day 
when  the  old  chestnut  tree  of  the  Tuileries  first 
puts  forth  its  leaves,  the  Printcmps  gives  away 
25,000  bouquets  of  violets.  Every  day  the 
Louvre  gives  the  children  balloons,  500  of 
them,  which  fioat  through  Paris.  The  Samari- 
faine  down  by  the  old  quay  has  taken  a  curi- 
ous way  of  combatting  the  prejudice  among 


THE  GREAT  SHOPS.  137 

the  poorer  classes  against  buying  on  Friday. 
Every  Friday  it  gives  away  a  teacup  or  a  sugar 
bowl   or  a   tray. 

The  ethical  influence  of  the  great  shops  lies 
especially  in  the  envy  of  luxury  and  the  need 
for  it  in  all  classes  which  they  create,  which 
always  means  a  refinement  of  taste.  This  uni- 
versal standard  of  taste  which  is  so  character- 
istic of  Paris  is  principally  the  result  of  the 
daily  sight  of  beautiful  things.  And  one  of 
the  beautiful  visions  for  many  millions  of  souls 
in  France  is  the  admirable  contrasts  of  color, 
the  intelligent  profusion  of  rich  and  rare  things 
which  fill  the  eyes  at  the  Louvre  and  the  Bon 
Marche. 


PART   II. 
THE   RULERS   OF   PARIS 


The   Chafnber  of  Deputies. 

Everybody  in  France  talks  ])olitics.  This 
does  not  mean  that  the  Government  is  popu- 
lar, but  that  it  is  ubiquitous.  Ten  times  a 
day,  in  every  sort  of  place,  from  a  salon  to  an 
onmibus,  you  are  sure  to  hear  the  inevitable: 
"If  I  were  the  Government!"  The  strange 
thing  is  that  while  everybody  talks  politics 
you  never  meet  anyone  who  seems  to  be 
really  interested  in  it — unless  it  be  some 
one  like  }our  concierge.  The  man  in  the 
street  is  the  only  one  who  still  has  some  of 
that  hope  which  triumphs  over  experience 
and  which  is  so  necessary  for  political  ardor. 
Nobody  else  believes  in  politics.  One  of  my 
friends  tells  me  that  he  has  voted,  from  a 
sense  of  duty,  every  four  years  all  his  life  for 
a  Deputy,  but  has  never  had  the  good  fortune 
to  see  a  single  one  of  his  candidates  elected. 
This,  he  said,  was  because  the  choice  of  a 
Deputy  was  always  determined  by  some  little 
side  issue  which  appealed  to  the  people,  out- 
side of  any  real  question  at  stake.  "If  the 
people  in  the  quarter  of  the  Rue  de  Bac  want 
a  gutter,"  he  went  on,  "it  is  the  man  who 
promises  them  a  gutter  who  is  elected.  You 
141 


142  P.iRIS   AS    IT   IS. 

may  be  sure  your  concierge  has  his  own  little 
plan  for  reform  and  improvement,  and  he 
will  cast  his  ballot  for  the  man  through  whom 
he  thinks  he  will  get  it." 

To  test  this  statement, one  day  1  questioned 
the  Cerberus  who  guards  my  dwelling  about 
his  political  faith.  He  began  by  protesting 
that  he  knew  nothing  about  politics;  and  in 
this  statement  he  was  confirmed  by  his  wife, 
really  much  the  better  man  of  the  two,  who 
kept  reiterating  with  emphasis,  "Francois  ne 
se  connait  pas  du  tout  en  politique."  I 
finally  extracted  that  Frangois  did  vote,  and 
always  for  the  man  who  was  "for  the  people." 
In  the  last  election  this  had  meant  the  candi- 
date who  promised  a  new  covered  market  to 
the  quarter.  No  one,  I  am  sure,  who  has 
ever  strolled  of  a  Wednesday  or  a  Saturday 
morning  along  the  banks  of  the  Seine  in  the 
sixteenth  arrondissement  can  have  any  doubt 
that  we  need  a  new  market,  and  covered; 
but  as  the  need  has  been  contemporary  with 
the  existence  of  this  part  of  town  itself,  I  can 
easily  see  why  only  a  small  number  of  its  in- 
habitants would  ever  have  faith  that  any  elec- 
tion would  bring  it  to  us.  The  man  of  the 
])eople  votes  becavise  in  that  way  he  feels  that 
he  is  exercising  his  rights  of  citizenship.  But 
among  the  other  classes  there  is  generally  the 
greatest  indifference  over  elections,  and  only 
a  fifth  of  the  voters  ever  go  to  the  polls. 


THE   CHAMBER   OE    DEPl'TIES.         143 

For  this  reason  the  various  wards  of  Paris 
find  themselves  represented  in  the  Chamber 
by  men  who  are  neither  tyjMcal  of  their  con- 
stituents nor  in  accord  with  each  other  on 
any  common  purpose.  For  instance,  an  aris- 
tocrat like  the  Comte  de  Sabran  Pontaves 
stands  for  la  Villette,  whose  population  is  al- 
most entirely  made  up  of  butchers;  and  a 
Socialist  like  Viviani  is  the  mouthpiece  of  the 
quarter  of  the  Schools.  The  same  principle 
holds  true  in  the  provinces.  I  know  of  a 
Deputy  in  Brittany,  Cosmao-Dumanet,  who 
has  been  returned  to  the  Chamber  for  fifteen 
years  simply  because  he  once  proposed  a  law 
— impossible  to  be  put  into  execution,  more- 
over— for  adding  each  week  to  the  rations  of 
the  soldiers  a  single  sardine.  Among  the 
fishing  populace  of  Finistere  this  has  been 
enough  to  make  his  whole  political  fortune. 
It  is  the  single  act  of  his  life,  but  it  is  suffi- 
cient.   His  position  is  unshakable. 

The  time  was,  in  the  early  days  of  the  Re- 
public, when  the  Deputies  busied  themselves 
over  real  things.  Then  they  were  engaged  in 
a  series  of  hand-to-hand  duels,  as  it  were, 
with  an  ever-threatening  monarchy.  Even  up 
to  as  late  as  1889  there  were  two  hundred 
Monarchist  Deputies  in  the  Chamber,  and 
France  was  divided  into  two  distinct  parties; 
Legitimists,  Orleanists  and  Imperialists  on 
the  one  side;  Conservative,  Progressive  and 


144  PARIS    AS    IT   IS. 

Radical  Republicans  on  the  other — these  last 
united  on  Republican  principles,  but  very 
much  at  odds  on  the  question  of  just  what 
kind  of  a  Republic  they  wanted,  and  how  to 
make  it.  To-day,  out  of  the  568  Deputies, 
there  are  only  forty-four  Monarchists.  Even 
Comte  Boni  de  Castellane,  with  his  political 
inheritance,  took  his  seat  in  the  Chamber, 
not  as  a  Monarchist,  but  as  a  Progressive 
Republican.  Now  that  the  lawmakers  of  the 
country  are  no  longer  united  on  vital  ques- 
tions, the  greater  part  of  them  have  come 
to  be  more  or  less  professional  politicians, 
principally  occupied  in  keeping  their  seats. 

Two  important  traits  of  the  French  char- 
acter shine  forth  conspicuotisly  in  a  Deputy. 
The  first  is  a  Frenchman's  horror  of  any  au- 
thority to  which  he  must  submit;  and  the  sec- 
ond his  love  for  any  he  exercises.  No  sooner 
has  he  taken  his  seat  in  the  Chamber  than  he 
begins  to  take  advantage  of  his  new  power  in 
every  possible  way.  At  his  pleasure  he  can 
propose  any  bill  or  project  for  a  law  which 
comes  into  his  head,  and  can  interpellate  the 
ministry  on  anything  he  pleases,  from  its  gen- 
eral policy  down  to  the  reason  why  the  doors 
of  the  railway  carriages  will  not  stay  shut,  or 
why  the  evening  before  such  and  such  a  street 
was  blocked  by  tralBc.  Therefore,  one  of  the 
principal  means  by  which  Deputies  make 
political  capital  is  by  some  absurd  interpella- 


THE   CHAMBER   OF    DEPUTIES.  145 

tion  of  the  Government  which  will  make  them 
talked  about;  or  by  some  amusing  or  abusive 
interruption  of  a  speech  which  will  attract  at- 
tention in  the  ofificial  report  of  a  session,  and 
make  the  people  at  home  think  they  are  rep- 
resented at  the  capital  by  a  great  man.  It  is 
hardly  necessary  to  say  that  the  number  of 
laws  and  the  number  of  interpellations  pro- 
posed is  always  something  enormous.  From 
1893  to  1898  two  hundred  interpellations 
were  discussed. 

As  an  instance  of  the  practical  working  of 
these  prerogatives,  take  the  question  of  the 
sous-prefets,  which  absorbed  so  much  atten- 
tion in  the  last  Chamber.  The  role  of  the 
prefet  is  almost  entirely  representative,  and 
he  does  not  need  an  assistant.  As  in  all 
countries,  the  questions  that  most  appeal  to 
the  people  are  naturally  those  of  reform  and 
economy;  and  when  the  hard-pressed  legis- 
lator looks  about  him  for  reforms  to  pro- 
pose, the  only  thing  he  can  ever  think  of  is  to 
suppress  the  sous-prefets.  His  efforts  at 
economy  remind  me  of  a  remark  an  Ameri- 
can woman  I  once  knew  made  to  me  on  the 
same  subject.  She  wanted  to  economize,  she 
said,  and  she  was  thinking  of  taking  up  smok- 
ing. "How  could  taking  up  smoking  possibly 
help  you?"  I  asked.  "Well,"  she  answered, 
"every  man  T  ever  saw  who  thought  of  econ- 
omizing always  said  he  was  going  to  give  up 


146  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

smoking.  And  as  that  was  the  only  thing  I 
could  think  of  that  I  could  give  up,  i  thought 
I  would  better  begin  it."  In  the  same  way, 
the  French  Deputy,  if  he  wanted  to  make  any 
real  economies,  would  have  to  take  up  some- 
thing, for  there  is  not  much  with  which  the 
Constitution  would  allow  him  to  do  away. 
To  give  up  the  sous-prefets,  he  would  first 
have  to  reform  the  Constitution.  This  does 
not  in  the  least  prevent  the  question  of  abol- 
ishing them  from  coming  up  in  the  Chamber 
with  periodical  regularity.  Ten  years  ago  the 
Freycinet  ministry  fell  because  the  Right 
joined  with  the  Radicals  to  refuse  the  appro- 
priations for  the  sous-prefectures.  This 
was  then  as  it  is  to-day  entirely  a  matter  of 
legislative  sparring,  and  I  do  not  know  any 
better  way  of  showing  how  this  game  of  fenc- 
ing still  goes  on  now,  as  it  probably  will  go  on 
ten  years  from  now,  than  through  this  extract 
from  the  Figaro  of  a  few  days  ago  by  Alfred 
Capus,  one  of  the  "funny  men"  on  that  paper 
who  gets  his  reputation  principally  by  chaff- 
ing the  Government: 

THE  QUESTION  OF  THE  SOUS-PREFETS. 

The  Senator:  I  am  listening,  my  dear 
Deputy. 

The  Deputy:  This  is  the  point.  This  ques- 
tion of  the  sous-prefets  is  coming  up  again  in 
the  Chamber. 


THE    CHAMBER   OF   DEPUTIES.         147 

The  Senator:    As  it  does  every  year? 

The  Deputy:  Yes,  but  this  time  it  will  have 
exceptional  gravity.  The  only  thing  our  con- 
stituents talk  of  is  economy.  They  do  noth- 
ing but  demand  economy,  reductions  in  the 
budget. 

The  Senator:    They  are  quite  right. 

The  Deputy:  They  are  a  thousand  times 
right;  we  are  running  up  against  a  blank  wall. 
Now,  from  this  point  of  view  it  is  evident  that 
the  suppression  of  the  sous-prefets  would  be 
an  excellent  thing.  These  functionaries,  we 
can  say  between  ourselves,  are  completely 
useless  to-day. 

The  Senator:  Absolutely  useless — unless 
perhaps  at  election  time,  when  they  render 
us  a  few  services. 

The  Deputy:  Yes,  then  it's  certain  that 
they  do  render  us  certain  services,  and  suffi- 
ciently important  ones.  But  it  is  impossible 
to  say  to  our  electors:  "The  sous-prefet  is 
nothing  but  an  electoral  agent."  It  might 
sound  a  little  cynical. 

The  Senator:    Just  a  little  cynical — yes. 

The  Deputy:  The  elector,  in  general,  sees 
in  this  question  only  a  possible  reform.  And 
we  are  obliged  to  satisfy  him.  Here  is  why 
I  am  going  to  stand  for  the  suppression  of  the 
sous-prefets,  and  with  firmness;  but  before 
voting  there  is  one  thing  I   should  Hke  jtp 


148  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

know.  If  the  bill  passes  the  Chamber,  the 
Senate  is  sure  to  reject  it,  is  it  not? 

The  Senator:    Oh,  perfectly  sure. 

The  Deputy:    You  promise  me  this? 

The  Senator:     I  promise  you. 

The  Deputy:  Because,  you  understand,  I 
am  quite  willing  to  vote  at  the  Chamber  to 
show  my  electors  that  I  am  a  partisan  of 
economy,  but  on  condition  that  I  am  sure 
the  measure  will  not  pass  the  Senate. 

The  Senator:  You  may  count  on  it.  You 
have  my  word. 

The  Deputy:  Imagine  me  without  a  sous- 
prefet  at  the  next  elections! 

The  Senator:  The  very  idea  makes  me 
shudder. 

The  Deputy:  Thanks  once  more.  I  shall 
vote  with  all  the  energy  possible. 

This  is  an  epitome  of  French  legislation. 
Coquelin  Cadet,  in  one  of  his  monologues, 
gives  another.  He  presents  himself  as  the 
model  Deputy.  "Do  you  ask  me  of  what 
party  I  am?"  he  says.  "Nothing  could  be 
easier  to  answer.  I  am  of  the  party  of  my 
electors!  And  as  for  reform,  I  am  for  all 
the  reforms;  but  for  one  in  particular  I  have 
had  an  idea  that  savors  of  genius.  As  the 
Senators  always  undo  everything  the  Depu- 
ties do,  and  the  Deputies  everything  the 
Senate  does,  I  propose  putting  all  the  Depu- 
ties into  the  Senate,  and  all  the  Senators  into 


THE   CHAMBER   OF   DEPUTIES.         149 

the  Chamber.     That  will  solve  the  problem 
and  then  we  can  accomplish  something." 

It  is  as  much  as  ever  that  any  legislation  at 
all  comes  out  of  these  political  gymnastics, 
which  are  principally  used  to  overturn  the 
Government.  Lord  Brougham  once  said: 
'"Happily  France  has  a  revolution  every  fif- 
teen years;  without  that  she  would  be  the 
first  of  nations."  Now  that  she  has  been 
twice  fifteen  years  without  making  a  revolu- 
tion, her  rivals  can  say:  "Happily  France 
changes  her  ministry  every  eight  months; 
without  that  no  one  knows  what  she  might 
become."  In  the  last  twenty-seven  years  she 
has  had  twenty-six  Ministers  of  Foreign  Af- 
fairs and  thirty-one  of  the  Interior.  "I  am 
nothing  but  an  old  umbrella  which  has  re- 
ceived many  showers,"  was  the  witty  remark 
of  a  Minister  not  long  ago.  It  is  easy  to  see 
that  no  consistent  general  policy  can  be  kept 
up  when  every  six  months  or  so  an  entire 
change  in  the  direction  not  only  stops  every- 
thing that  has  been  begun,  but  substitutes  a 
radically  new  set  of  ideas  for  those  that  are  in 
process  of  execution.  Somebody  has  called  the 
Chamber  a  "Congress  of  Ambassadors."  No 
sort  of  majority  is  ever  to  be  depended  upon. 
The  Ministry,  instead  of  giving  its  attention 
to  great  and  important  questions,  is  obUged 
to  fight  constantly  for  its  existence  by  con- 
ciliating this  or  that  or  the  other  adversary 


T50  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

in  order  to  keep  the  executive  machine  going 
on.  A  typical  instance  of  this  was  seen  lately 
when  Waldeck-Roiisseau  allowed  -the  Social- 
ists to  carry  their  red  flag  at  the  unveiling  of 
the  statue  to  Dalou,  the  "Triumph  of  the 
Republic."  Any  concession  to  socialism  al- 
ways alarms  the  Conservative  element  of  the 
Chamber,  and  the  Waldeck-Rousseau  Minis- 
try in  consequence  only  escaped  falling  by  the 
skin  of  its  teeth,  while  if  it  had  not  given 
the  permission,  it  would  equally  have  risked 
being  overturned  by  the  extreme  Left. 

The  root  of  the  trouble  is  that  France  has 
quite  wandered  away  from  the  Constitution, 
made  in  1875,  and  admirably  adapted  to  her 
present  needs.  This  provides  that  power 
shall  be  of  two  sorts:  legislative,  vested  in 
the  Senate  and  the  Chamber;  and  ad- 
ministrative, vested  in  the  ^Ministry.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  Ministry  only  executes 
such  laws  as  the  Chamber  allows,  and  cus- 
tom forces  it  to  resign  every  time  it  is  not 
supported  by  a  majority  of  the  Chamber. 
For  a  long  time  this  was  necessary  in 
the  fight  against  monarchy,  when  the  Cham.- 
ber  had,  as  it  were,  to  feel  its  way  along 
and  be  sure  that  the  country  was  with  it ;  but 
it  is  fatal  to-day,  when  this  habit  has  been 
turned  into  nothing  but  a  means  of  con- 
stantly hampering  and  teasing  the  Govern- 
ment.   Safety  for  the  country  lies  only  in  the 


THE   CHAMBER   OP   DEPUTIES.         151 

Ministry  called  for  by  the  Constitution; 
homogeneous,  that  is  to  say,  composed  of 
members  having  common  aims  and  a  com- 
mon programme  of  foreign  and  domestic 
policy,  for  which  they  are  responsible  not 
only  to  the  Chamber,  but  to  the  Senate,  and, 
above  all,  a  Ministry  responsible  to  the  legis- 
lature only  for  its  general  policy.  Now  the 
Ministry  stands  or  falls  purely  at  the  caprice 
of  groups,  on  trivial  issues.  Why  should  the 
Freycinet  Ministry  have  resigned  ten  years 
ago  on  the  question  of  the  sous-prefets,  sim- 
ply because  it  was  the  caprice  of  the  Right  to 
unite  with  the  Radicals  to  refuse  the  appro- 
priations for  the  sous-prefectures?  This  was 
pure  teasing.  It  could  have  no  practical  re- 
sult. Later  the  Tirard  Ministry  resigned 
because  it  pleased  this  same  Right  to  demand 
an  immediate  revision  of  the  Constitution; 
and  when  the  Floquet  Ministry  came  in  and 
naturally  put  revision  into  its  programme,  the 
Right  capriciously  voted  to  adjourn  revision 
indefinitely,  and  the  Floquet  Ministry  went 
out  in  its  turn. 

In  this  way  France  is  rapidly  falling  under 
what  Jefferson  feared  for  the  United  States. 
He  called  it  "the  tyranny  of  the  legislators." 
Instead  of  having  one  sovereign,  she  has  568. 
What  the  French  most  admire  in  our  Repub- 
lic is,  as  expressed  by  M.  Paul  Deschanel, 
President  of  the  Chamber,  "the  wisdom  and 


152  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

moderation  with  which  this  great  American 
people  has,  to  use  the  words  of  Webster, 
'spontaneously  limited  its  own  sovereignty 
and  put  boundaries  to  it.'  " 

But  when  France  begins  to  think  of  estab- 
lishing a  Government  like  ours,  she  finds  her- 
self face  to  face  with  great  problems  which  we 
have  not.  In  the  midst  of  the  heavily-armed 
peoples  of  Europe  she  must  keep  up  an  enor- 
mous standing  army,  in  the  very  nature  of  its 
organization  a  constant  menace  to  republican 
principles.  To  add  to  the  prerogatives  of  the 
President  and  make  him  "chief  of  the  army," 
as  ours  is,  seconded  by  Ministers  irrespon- 
sible before  the  two  legislative  bodies,  would 
be  a  serious  danger  with  a  people  so  easily 
carried  away  as  the  French.  Another  vital 
objection  would  be  found  in  the  centralization 
of  her  Government,  so  difficult  for  us  to 
understand.  Imagine,  for  instance,  that  it 
was  the  Government  at  Washington  who  de- 
cided just  how  many  churches  there  should 
be  in  every  town  in  the  United  States,  and 
how  they  should  be  managed;  and  who  di- 
rected every  educational  institution  in  the 
country,  so  that  a  mother  with  a  son  away 
at  school  or  college  would  have  to  write  to 
the  capital  to  make  so  small  a  complaint  as 
that  her  boy's  clothes  were  not  mended 
properly.  I  have  seen  lately  a  letter  of  this 
sort  in  the  Paris  papers.     With  us  a  thousand 


THE   CHAMBER   OE   DEPUTIES.         153 

intermediary  forces  break  the  central  power, 
and  therefore  not  only  guarantee  the  respect 
of  individual  liberty  but  preserve  the  country 
from  coups  d'etat.  Every  part  of  France  is 
subject  to  exactly  the  same  laws,  and  the 
Government  interferes  at  every  turn  with 
private  life.  If  at  the  head  of  this  were  a 
President  with  the  perogatives  of  ours,  the 
creature  of  a  victorious  power,  aided  by  Min- 
isters free  to  abuse  their  power  during  four 
years,  existence  would  become  impossible. 
Between  two  tyrannies  France  prefers  that 
of  the  568. 

The  French  Chamber  is  a  less  interesting 
place  to  visit,  to  my  mind,  than  either  the 
House  of  Commons  or  the  House  in  Wash- 
ington, and  the  reason  of  this  is  because  of 
the  political  methods  of  this  body  of  sover- 
eigns. The  details  of  their  proceedings  are 
not  interesting.  Its  members,  though  not 
brilliant  orators,  are  generally  clever  speak- 
ers. Of  such,  for  instance,  is  a  man  like 
Brisson,  who  developed  political  sparring 
into  a  fine  art  in  defending  the  Empire,  or 
Paschal  Grousset,  who  became  equally  skill- 
ful in  trying  to  demolish  the  Republic. 
Many  of  the  younger  Deputies  are  graduates 
of  the  ficole  des  Hautes-fitudcs  Politique, 
or  have  learned  political  fencing  in  what  is 
called  the  Mole  School;  a  curious  institu- 
tion invented   by   ambitious   young   lawyers, 


154  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

where  a  hall  is  divided  into  Right  and 
Left,  and  imaginary  bills  are  proposed  and 
attacked.  Poincare,  Barthou,  Deschanel, 
Jaures,  Millerand,  men  of  great  political  rep- 
utation, in  spite  of  the  fact  that  none  of  them 
is  yet  over  forty,  are  Parisians  who  have  skil- 
fully and  prudently  worked  up  their  political 
careers.  The  great  mass  of  the  Deputies  is 
made  up  of  the  most  widely  differing  types, 
according  to  whether  they  are  men  who  have 
gone  into  politics  through  ambition,  through 
interest,  by  chance  or  as  a  sort  of  sport,  ac- 
cording to  the  party  to  which  they  belong, 
and  according  to  whether  they  are  Parisians 
or  provincials.  These  last,  too,  vary  w'ith 
the  part  of  the  country  from  which  they 
come.  Maurice  Barres,  in  a  recent  novel 
called  "Les  Deracines,"  has  painted  in  a  re- 
markable manner  the  young  provincial  who 
tears  himself  away  from  his  native  soil  and 
comes  to  Paris  to  seek  his  political  fortune, 
and  the  world  in  which  he  finds  himself, 
seething  with  ideas,  and  filled  with  a  strug- 
gling mass  of  men  who  have  long  since  fath- 
omed all  the  possible  means  of  "arriving." 

French  politics  have  now  so  fallen  into  the 
hands  of  professionals  that  to  see  an  every- 
day individual  trying  his  hand  at  them  gives 
you  somewhat  the  sensation  that  you  have 
when  you  see  an  amateur  trying  to  play 
some  gentle,  peaceful  home  tune  in  a  modern 


THE   CHAMBER   OF   DEPUTIES.         155 

salon  at  a  musical  matinee,  with  its  pro- 
gramme of  artists.  The  common  people  take 
a  real  interest  in  politics.  They  subscribe  to 
a  sou  paper  and  follow  its  political  color.  It 
is  the  "Petit  Journal,"  "L'intransigeant,"  "La 
Libre  Parole,"  which  rule  the  workingman 
and  make  public  opinion  among  the  lower 
classes  of  Paris  in  which  are  nearly  all  the 
voters.  This  is  the  reason  why  the  capital  is 
so  generally  represented  in  the  House  by 
"Chauvinists,"  or  Nationalists  and  Socialists, 
as  they  are  now  called.  They  are  the  mili- 
tary party. 

Every  one  talks  politics,  however,  as  I  said 
in  the  beginning.  Abel  Hermant  in  his  new 
play,  "Le  Faubourg,"  represents  it  as  as  much 
a  subject  of  conversation  in  the  Faubourg 
St.  Germain  as  it  is  everywhere  else.  "What 
we  need  is  good  Republicans — brought  up 
by  the  Jesuits!"  is  one  of  the  mots  of  the 
piece.  It  all  ends  in  talk.  The  Monarchists 
live  in  a  dream;  the  actual  regime  does  not 
interest  them,  and  they  live  upon  visions  of  a 
new  monarchy.  And,  outside  of  professional 
politicians,  the  Socialists  live  in  just  as  much 
of  a  dream.  In  talking  with  a  leading  Social- 
ist not  long  ago,  he  told  me  he  had  no 
political  opinions.  He  is  waiting,  like  all  of 
his  faith,  for  a  new  order  of  society;  and 
meanwhile  he  lives  outside  of  the  one  that 
exists. 


156  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

Meanwhile,  the  Government  goes  on  as 
best  it  can  with  its  brave  task  of  reconciUng 
all  these  elements  and  holding  up  the  Repub- 
lic, as  every  other  monarchical  country  in 
Europe  will  have  to  do  when,  in  the  course 
and  sweep  of  the  modern  movement,  its  time 
will  have  come  for  trying  to  establish  some- 
thing representing  liberty,  equality  and  fra- 
ternity on  the  ruins  of  its  old  self.  The  Gov- 
ernment has  its  own  way  of  doing  this,  and 
it  is  generally  incomprehensible  to  the 
amazed  world  looking  on.  It  lets  a  man 
like  Guerin  go  on  protesting  against  the 
existing  order  of  things  by  having  a  little 
"private  five  o'clock  revolution,"  and  calling 
his  house  "Fort  Chabrol,"  because  it  knows 
that  it  has  no  constitutional  right  to  shed 
Guerin's  blood  for  a  thing  of  this  sort,  and 
if  it  does  it  will  be  sure  to  fall.  It  does  not 
want  to  fall  because  it  has  something  else  to 
do.  It  knows  that  the  real  danger  for  France 
does  not  lie  in  a  monarchic  revolution,  but 
in  a  coup  d'etat  by  some  daring  person 
who  may  take  advantage  of  the  general  in- 
difference to  establish  a  dictatorship.  It  was 
for  this  reason  that  the  High  Court  was  sum- 
moned. It  was  not  because  of  a  monarchist 
plot — there  is  always  a  monarchist  plot,  and 
it  never  has  any  chance  of  succeeding — but 
because  Deroulede,  acquitted  by  the  Civil 
Court,  and  his  attempt  to  persuade  General 


THE  CHAMBER  OF  DEPUTIES.         157 

Roget  to  march  to  the  Elysee  tacitly  ap- 
proved therefore  by  the  Jury  of  the  Seine — 
and  this  means  by  the  common  people  of 
Paris — set  an  example  which  was  a  real  dan- 
ger for  the  Republic.  The  real  object  of  the 
summoning  of  the  Haute  Cour  was  purely 
to  disqualify  Deroulede. 

Perhaps  some  day,  not  far  off,  France  will 
succeed  in  bringing  about  the  radical  reforms 
she  needs  for  carrying  on  her  Republic,  such 
as  diminishing  the  number  of  Deputies,  in- 
creasing the  prerogatives  of  the  Senate,  and 
persuading  the  President  to  use  more  fre- 
quently his  power  of  suspending  or  dissolving 
the  Chamber  or  both  houses.  Perhaps  some 
day,  not  far  ofi,  we  shall  see  her  set  up  a  dic- 
tatorship. Who  knows!  The  great  mass  of 
the  people  do  not  want  a  change,  to  disor- 
ganize the  existing  order  of  things,  and  in- 
crease all  the  dif^culties  of  the  struggle  for 
existence;  but  if  it  came  they  would  probably 
accept  it  quietly,  for  their  interests  are  out- 
side of  politics,  and  they  do  not  much  care 
how  they  are  governed. 


The  Rlysee. 


Nothing  in  France  is  harder  for  Americans 
to  understand  than  her  President.  We  expect 
to  find  a  French  President  filling  some  such 
place  as  ours  at  home.  I  well  remember  the 
first  time  I  was  in  Paris  during  a  presidential 
election.  In  view  of  the  general  upturning 
of  the  country  from  one  end  to  the  other 
which  such  a  thing  means  to  us,  I  looked  for 
something  extraordinary  from  the  French  in 
the  way  of  demonstration,  and  when  nothing 
happened  at  all,  it  was  almost  impossible  not 
to  feel  a  little  defrauded.  Paris  did  not  even 
seem  enough  interested  in  her  new  Chief 
Magistrate  to  go  out  to  the  Champs  Elysees 
to  watch  him  driving  back  in  triumph  from 
Versailles.  And  I  remarked  once  more  that 
the  French  were  an  extraordinary  people,  and 
that  it  was  invariably  the  unexpected  which 
happened  with  them;  without  stopping  to 
think  that  the  expected  in  every  country  is 
only  what,  from  our  own  standpoint,  we 
expect. 

This  is  not  so  much  due  to  a  difference  of 
temperament  between  the  French  and  our- 
selves as  it  is  to  a  difference  of  condi- 
158 


THE   ELY  SEE.  159 

tions.  The  Frenchman  does  not  excite  him- 
self, over  his  presidential  candidate,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  he  seldom  has  a  candidate. 
The  President  of  France  is  the  representative 
of  the  people,  but  he  is  not  elected  by  the  peo- 
ple. He  is  chosen  only  by  the  two  Chambers, 
and  up  to  the  very  day  he  is  sworn  into  office 
he  has  often  never  been  heard  of  by  the  greater 
part  of  his  compatriots.  I  remember  the  com- 
ing in  of  Felix  Faure.  People  had  heard  of  a 
Sebastian  Faure,  an  anarchist,  and  they  said: 
"Who  is  this  man  Faure  who  has  been  made 
President?  Is  it  the  anarchist?"  Then,  once  in 
oflfice,  the  new  President  is  nominally  the  head 
of  the  State,  and  yet  he  is  not  allowed  to  have 
a  voice  in  anything  that  goes  on.  Even  the 
few  powers  which  the  Constitution  gives  him, 
such  as  those  of  dissolving  or  suspending  the 
two  Chambers,  he  dares  not  exercise  for  fear 
of  being  suspected  of  meditating  a  coup  d'etat. 
When  he  is  elected  he  is  generally  a  simple 
bourgeois,  living  in  a  plain,  unostentatious 
fashion;  and  then  the  French  love  for  tradi- 
tional pomp  forces  him  from  one  day  to  an- 
other to  exhibit  himself  as  the  central  figure 
in  a  cortege  of  officers,  to  drive  in  a  State  car- 
riage with  horses  mounted  by  postilions,  in  a 
livery  which  makes  an  American  think  of  a 
circus  rider  or  a  toreador,  to  give  banquets  to 
sovereigns,  and  to  live  in  a  palace.  His  rela- 
tions to  the  people,  I  should  say,  are  about  as 


i6o  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

close  as  those  of  the  president  of  a  railroad  to 
his  passengers;  and  yet  their  instincts  demand 
that  he  shall  in  some  way  correspond  to  their 
notions  of  a  king.  So  there  is  no  greater  anom- 
aly than  the  President;  and  his  false  position  is 
always  sure  to  be  ridiculed  by  the  changing, 
chafBng  Parisian  populace. 

I  am  often  asked  if  the  man  in  office 
is  popular.  I  should  say  no  French  Presi- 
dent was  ever  really  popular.  Whatever 
position  he  takes  appears  to  be  always 
exactly  the  contrary  of  what  he  should 
have  done.  Jules  Grevy,  for  instance,  was  a 
politician  and  eloquent  public  speaker,  whose 
remarkable  good  sense  had  a  large  share  in  the 
ruin  of  the  Empire  and  the  founding  of  the  Re- 
public. But  as  he  succeeded  MacMahon,  who 
fell  because  he  showed  he  was  in  favor  of  a 
monarchial  restoration,  Grevy  judged  that  his 
own  role  ought  to  be  purely  representative, 
with  no  influence  whatever  upon  the  course  of 
affairs.  So  he  organized  his  household  on  a 
scale  of  the  most  republican  simplicity,  like 
that  of  a  simple  citizen.  This  was  precisely 
what  was  thrown  in  his  face.  He  was  called  a 
concierge  and  a  niggard,  and  was  caricatured 
in  shirt  sleeves  and  a  cotton  nightcap. 

Sadi  Carnot,  to  avoid  Grevy's  mistakes, 
went  to  the  other  extreme.  He  set  up  a  train 
de  maison  which  cost  him  each  year  nearly  all 
his  private  income,  and  he  multiplied  his  tours 


Tim   ELVSEE.  i6i 

through  the  country,  his  receptions,  his  official 
visits.  Then  people  began  to  reproach  in  him 
what  they  had  clamored  for  inGrevy.  His  cari- 
catures represented  him  as  an  automaton  with 
a  dress  suit  glued  to  his  body,  lifting  his  hat 
and  bowing  at  regular  intervals  like  a  me- 
chanical doll. 

Felix  Faure's  ease  of  manner,  and  the  tact 
with  which  he  received  the  Russian  Emperor, 
the  Parisians  naturally  pronounced  the  false 
elegance  and  pretentiousness  of  a  parvenu.  If 
he  had  lived  a  little  longer  I  am  not  at  all  sure 
that  they  would  not  have  accused  this  simple 
business  man,  who  w^as  once  a  tanner,  of  be- 
ing too  much  of  an  aristocrat.  There  has  hard- 
ly been  time  to  find  in  Emile  Loubet  exactly 
the  opposite  defects  to  those  of  his  predeces- 
sors; but  this  will  surely  come.  Has  he  not 
already  been  accused  of  lacking  in  decorum? 
He  left  a  State  procession  to  throw  himself  in 
the  arms  of  his  old  mother  at  Montelimar. 

The  fact  is,  that  France  has  been  too  long 
ruled  by  kings  and  emperors  to  be  able  to 
comprehend  as  its  head  a  man  who  is  some- 
thing less  than  a  king,  and  more  than  kind. 
He  is  a  paradox,  and  there  is  a  fitness  in  his 
living  in  a  place  like  the  Elysee,  which  in  it- 
self is  an  anomaly  as  well.  It  is  a  little  less 
than  a  palace,  and  more  than  an  ordinary  pri- 
vate hotel;  and,  oddly  enough,  almost  ever 
since  it  was  built  it  has  been  occupied  only  by 


i62  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

personages  whose  position  in  the  State  was 
undefined.  For  a  long  time  it  was  the  home 
of  Madame  de  Pompadour,  a  woman  who  was 
treated  Hke  a  queen  and  feared  Hke  a  Prime 
Minister,  but  who,  after  all,  was  nothing  but 
an  adventuress.  Then,  Josephine  spent  there 
the  month  before  her  divorce,  when  she  was 
still  an  Empress  in  name  and  yet  already  de- 
throned. Murat,  not  born  a  king,  but  only  a 
simple  soldier  of  fortune,  awaited  there  the 
precarious  crown  of  Naples.  Napoleon  spent 
in  it  the  three  days  after  Waterloo,  and  signed 
there  his  second  abdication;  and  after  him, 
strangely  enough,  came  Wellington.  The  Due 
de  Berry,  that  son  of  a  king  who  was  never  to 
be  a  king,  lived  there  up  to  his  tragic  death. 
From  1849  to  1852,  Louis  Bonaparte  lived  in 
this  palace  as  "Prince  President,"  and  planned 
there  the  coup  de  force  that  was  to  make  of 
him  Napoleon  III.  And,  finally,  it  was  from 
theElysee  that  the  beautiful  Eugenie  de  Teba, 
the  greatest  adventuress  of  all  to  the  French, 
went  to  that  marriage  which  was  to  make  of 
her  the  last  sovereigness  of  France. 

The  house  is  like  its  history.  It  is  of  all 
epochs  and  of  all  styles.  Seen  from  the 
Faubourg  St.  Honore,  its  fa<;ade  no  doubt 
equals  that  of  any  of  those  fine  old  hotels  built 
in  the  Eighteenth  Century  for  princes  or  bank- 
ers, and  called  "The  Follies."  It  has  the 
squareness  of  the  time  of  Louis    XIV.,    and 


THE   ELY  SEE.  163 

some  of  the  elegance  of  that  of  Louis  XV.  It 
is  a  type  of  the  transition  from  one  to  the 
other,  and,  even  if  we  did  not  know  the  date 
when  it  was  built,  we  could  divine  it — 1718. 

But  as  you  drive  down  the  Faubourg  St. 
Honore  and  recognize  the  home  of  the  Presi- 
dent by  the  sentries  in  uniform  on  either  side 
of  the  great  stone  gates,  it  is  only  necessary  to 
cast  one  glance  into  the  courtyard  to  find  at 
once  a  shocking  anachronism.  This  is  the 
glass  cage  which  surrounds  the  flight  of  steps 
leading  up  to  the  entrance,  called  by  the  Presi- 
dent's household  the  "monkey  palace,"  be- 
cause it  looks  so  much  like  the  great  monkey 
cage  at  the  Jardin  d'Acclimatation.  This  was 
the  work  of  President  Carnot.  No  glory  of  be- 
ing President  of  his  country  could  ever  quite 
equal,  to  Sadi  Carnot,  that  which  came  to  him 
when  as  a  young  man  and  an  engineer  he  built 
an  aqueduct  that  became  celebrated  in  all 
Savoy.  Of  what  profit  was  it  to  France  to  have 
an  engineer  at  its  head,  if  he  did  not  build 
something?  And  Carnot  constructed,  too,  a 
wonderful  ballroom,  made,  like  the  EifTel 
tower,  entirely  of  iron,  which  ran  along  the 
whole  right  wing  of  the  house.  The  left  wing 
was  built  by  Louis  Napoleon,  and  Grevy  left 
his  mark  in  a  great  salle  looking  out  on  the 
garden.  Only  one  thing  has  been  left  un- 
touched through  all  these  changes  of  a  century 
and  a  half,  and  that  is  the  charming  little  pavil- 


i64  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

ion  in  the  garden  which  was  once  the  "silver 
boudoir"  of  Madame  de  Pompadour.  From 
this  to  the  "monkey  palace"  might  be  taken  as 
an  exact  measure  of  the  transformation  which 
the  years  have  wrought  in  the  taste  and  ideas 
of  the  successive  inhabitants  of  the  Elysee. 

If  the  position  of  the  President  is  a  con- 
trast to  ours,  the  inside  life  of  the  Elysee 
offers  a  still  greater  one.  Our  President  may 
be  ceremonious  or  not  as  he  pleases.  It  de- 
pends only  on  his  former  training.  But  the 
President  of  France  is  like  a  hapless  fly 
caught  by  chance  in  a  great  spider's  web  of 
traditional  ceremonies.  All  his  walk  of  life 
is  regulated  by  a  mysterious  something  called 
the  Protocol,  which  takes  outward  form  in  as 
many  as  eight  or  ten  people,  under  a  chief, 
M.  Crozier,  whose  only  business  is  to  see 
that  he  and  everybody  around  him  conduct 
themselves  according  to  rule.  Nobody 
knows  exactly  why  this  degree  of  ceremony 
is  kept  up,  and  still  less  would  any  one  know 
how  to  do  away  with  it.  When  the  Presi- 
dent goes  to  a  gala  performance  at  the  Opera, 
or  at  the  Comedie  Frangaise,  the  Director 
comes  to  meet  him  at  the  door  with  a  torch- 
light in  his  hand,  and  escorts  him  to  his  box, 
exactly  as  in  the  days  of  royalty.  This  is  writ- 
ten somewhere,  in  some  old  book  of  statutes, 
as  one  of  the  duties  of  a  director  of  a  state 
theatre.     Who  would  have  the  authority  to 


THE   ELYSEE.  165 

say  at  any  particular  day  of  any  particular 
year  that  this  old  custom  should  come  to  an 
end?  The  President  never  appears  officially 
to  any  person,  or  in  any  place,  without  hav- 
ing the  details  regulated  by  some  such  tradi- 
tion which  has  passed  into  a  rule.  Even  his 
unofficial  acts  do  not  appear  to  an  American 
to  be  exactly  characterized  by  simplicity. 
Take,  for  instance.  President  Faure's  morning 
ride  in  the  Bois,  which  he  always  took  at 
eight  o'clock  in  the  morning.  He  was  always 
attended  by  the  member  of  his  miHtary  house- 
hold specially  charged  with  the  superior  di- 
rection of  his  cavalry  and  his  hunting.  The 
President  and  the  officer  left  the  Elysee  to- 
gether, in  the  President's  coupe,  the  "piou- 
piou"  on  guard  saluting  as  they  got  into  the 
carriage.  They  drove  to  the  Rond  point  dcs 
cavaliers  in  the  Bois,  where  was  found  the 
famous  piqueur  Montjareret,  with  a  groom 
holding  the  President's  beautiful  thorough- 
bred, and  the  director-general  of  the  military 
cabinet,  of  the  Elysee.  With  this  cortege, 
the  President  started  out  for  his  ride,  a  little 
in  advance  of  the  others,  the  groom  bringing 
up  the  rear  on  a  thoroughbred  which  was  a 
present  from  the  Emperor  of  Morocco.  Even 
if  President  Loubet  goes  for  a  little  stroll  on 
the  boulevards,  he  is  always  followed  by  de- 
tectives in  plain  clothes. 

As  French  Presidents  when  thev  enter  of- 


i66  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

fice  have  alwa\s,  like  our  own,  reached  an 
age  when  their  habits  are  pretty  well  settled 
for  life,  they  have  never  taken  any  more 
kindly  than  ours  to  this  surveillance  and  to 
the  pomp  of  courts,  and  consequently  live 
lives  whose  two  halves  are  paradoxes.  Felix 
Faure  built  in  the  grounds  of  his  villa  at 
Havre  a  little  summer-house  where  he  could 
peacefully  smoke  his  pipe,  out  of  reach  of 
the  Protocol.  He  never  occupied  the  state 
bedroom  at  the  Elysee,  but  had  fitted  up  for 
his  own  use  a  room  with  a  little  iron  bed  with 
white  curtains,  and  simple  furniture  such  as 
you  may  see  exposed  at  the  Bon-Marche. 
Neither  did  he  write  at  the  splendid  Louis 
XIV.  table,  ornamented  with  exquisite 
brasses  chiseled  by  Gouttiere.  which  is  shown 
in  the  public  of^ce  of  the  President.  He 
worked  in  a  private  room  arranged  like  a 
business  man's  olifice,  with  a  plain  counting- 
house  desk.  Carnot  also  fitted  up  for  him- 
self a  private  suite  of  rooms,  and  Loubet  is 
already  following  the  example  of  his  prede- 
cessors. 

None  of  the  Presidents  have  left  behind 
them  in  the  Elysee  the  slightest  trace  of  their 
individuality.  Even  the  pictures  that  they 
have  bought  have  not  been  chosen  from  any 
personal  preference.  Xo  President  has  ever 
had  any  taste  for  art.  Every  one  purchased 
so    many  pictures    a    year,   but    ihey   were 


THE   ELY  SEE.  167 

always  chosen  by  the  secretaries  or  even 
by  the  architect  of  the  palace.  The  only 
souvenir  of  a  presidential  occupant  that  I 
know  of  to  be  found  in  the  Elysee  is  Grevy's 
pet  duck,  which  still  swims  about  in  one  of 
the  basins  of  the  garden,  and  answers  to  the 
name  of  "Baby,"  which  Grevy  gave  it.  Presi- 
dent Grevy  was  very  fond  of  playing  billiards, 
but  there  is  nothing  personal  about  his  bil- 
liard-table, which  is  still  there.  It  is  exactly 
like  any  other  billiard-table. 

For  that  matter  the  French  President,  also 
like  our  own,  has  very  few  moments  for  the 
indulgence  of  his  personal  tastes.  The  only 
time  he  has  to  himself  is  before  nine  o'clock 
in  the  morning.  After  that,  the  hour  from 
nine  to  ten  is  devoted  to  the  reading  of  his 
mail,  which  has  been  carefully  sorted  for  him, 
and  to  the  signing  of  documents.  He  does 
not  make  laws,  but  he  makes  decrees.  He 
can  decree,  for  instance,  that  the  Exposition 
of  1900  shall  open  on  the  15th  of  April. 
The  rest  of  his  time  is  given  up  to  the  Council 
meetings,  the  holding  of  audiences,  the  mak- 
ing of  state  visits,  the  giving  of  receptions,  the 
visiting  of  hospitals,  the  opening  of  Salon  or 
Exposition,  the  going  in  state  to  the  races,  or 
to  some  one  of  the  thousand  and  one  places 
which  old  monarchical  traditions  require  the 
head  of  the  State  to  solemnize  with  his  pres- 
ence. The  same  sort  of  thing  must  be  kept  up 


i68  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

at  night,  for  the  ball  of  the  Hotel  de  V'ille 
cannot  be  opened  without  the  President,  nor 
the  Cadet's  ball,  nor  any  similar  function. 
Strange  importance  given  to  the  representa- 
tive role  of  a  man  whose  part  with  his  minis- 
ters is  no  more  than  that  of  mediator  or 
peacemaker!  The  President  who  did  not  play 
this  to  his  satisfaction  resigned — Casimir 
Perier.  It  goes  without  saying  that  this  para- 
doxical ruler  does  not  hold  open  receptions, 
like  ours  at  the  White  House,  where  any 
citizen  may  walk  in  and  shake  hands  with 
him.  The  Protocol  decides  who  shall  be  re- 
ceived by  him  when  he  is  at  home,  on  two 
mornings  of  the  week.  This  privilege  is 
granted  to  the  ordinary  mortal  only  if  he 
write,  a  few  days  beforehand,  to  the  director 
of  the  "civil  cabinet,"  or  to  the  "General  Sec- 
retary of  the  Presidency." 

In  curious  contrast  to  the  fictitious  splendor 
of  the  President's  position  is  the  utter  efiface- 
ment  of  the  ladies  of  the  Elysee.  I  went  to 
Paris  just  at  the  time  when  Mrs.  Cleveland's 
youth  and  loveliness  were  reigning  in  our  re- 
publican court  at  home,  and  a  large  part  of 
the  daily  press  was  filled  with  details  about 
her  personality.  We  knew  just  how  many 
buttons  she  wore  on  her  glove,  and  whether 
the  baby  had  a  silver  or  a  coral  rattle.  In 
France  it  was  hard  to  understand  why  more 
Yfd,s  not  said  about  Madame  Carnot,  and  this 


Decoration   over   the   Door   of   the   Elysee. 


The   President's   Library  at   the   Elysee. 


THE   ELYSEE.  169 

silence  seemed  still  more  inexplicable  in  tiie 
case  of  the  next  President's  young  daughter. 
Mile.  Lucie  Faure.  wShe  had  even  written  a 
little  book, an  account  of  a  journey  in  Italy  she 
made  with  her  father,  and  nobody  had  ever 
heard  of  it.  At  home  it  would  have  been  in 
every  house  in  the  land.  Officially,  the 
women  of  a  President's  family  do  not  exist. 
For  that  matter,  nearly  everything  pertaining 
to  the  status  of  woman  in  France  still  rests 
legally  upon  traditions  which  had  their  rise 
in  the  attitude  of  the  little  Corsican  towards 
vv'omen.  On  that  point  he  was  mediaeval. 
Personally  the  feminine  contingent  of  the 
Elysee  must  be  rather  glad  that  the  Consti- 
tution does  not  recognize  them,  for  it  lets  the 
chief  lady  of  the  Elysee  keep  up  her  ordinary 
habits  of  life.  She  can  have  her  "day  at 
home,"  and  go  out  and  come  in  like  any  of 
her  friends.  But  as  a  wife  with  no  official 
position,  she  can  meet  many  of  her  hus- 
band's guests  only  through  courtesy.  This 
was  especially  noticeable  when  the  Czar  and 
Czarina  visited  Paris.  In  no  way  did  the 
young  Empress  show  more  her  exquisite  tact 
than  in  her  attitude  towards  the  wives  of  pres- 
ent and  past  Presidents.  She  sent  for  Mme. 
and  Mile.  Lucie  Faure  to  come  and  see  her, 
and  the  first  thing  she  did  after  leaving  the 
train,  on  the  very  day  of  her  arrival,  was  to 
go  and  make  a  visit  to  the  wife  of  France's 


I70  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

murdered  President,  Madame  Carnot.  She 
had  been  at  her  grandmother's,  Queen  Vic- 
toria, she  said,  when  the  terrible  news  of  the 
assassination  was  received  in  England,  and 
should  never  forget  the  grief  of  the  entire 
court;  and  she  made  up  her  mind  then  that 
if  she  ever  went  to  Paris  the  first  thing  she 
should  do  would  be  to  express  her  sympathy 
to  Madame  Carnot.  This  spontaneous  bit  of 
womanly  feeling  in  a  sovereign  of  the  most 
ceremonious  court  in  Europe,  on  an  oflEicial 
visit,  is,  I  think,  a  charming  thing  in  history. 
I  make  it  a  rule  to  go  to  one  ball  at  the 
Elysee  in  every  administration.  All  these 
functions  are  exactly  alike,  except  for  the 
change  in  the  chief  figureheads,  and  they  are 
as  characteristically  anomalous  as  everything 
about  the  palace.  The  Protocol  makes  them, 
in  many  respects,  of  remarkable  spectacular 
splendor  in  their  appointments,  while  these 
serve  as  a  background  for  the  most  motley 
collection  of  people  that  could  be  gathered 
together  under  one  roof.  The  ranks  of 
motionless  guards  that  line  the  steps  as  you 
enter,  in  their  statuesque  impressiveness. 
might  be  the  famous  Swiss  of  the  Tuileries. 
The  Protocol  sees  that  you  have  sensation 
of  a  presentation  of  some  sort  as  you  enter 
the  President's  presence,  announced  by  a 
magnificent  functionary  wearing  a  glittering 
chain.     He  shouts  your  name,  half  across  a 


THE   ELY  SEE.  171 

great  empty  room,  in  the  centre  of  which 
stands  the  Chief  Magistrate,  wearing  the  broad 
red  ribbon  of  Commander  of  the  Legion  of 
Honor,  surrounded  by  the  ghttering  uniforms 
of  his  mihtary  household,  and  the  sparkling 
jewels  and  brilliant  toilets  of  the  ladies  of  the 
President's  family  and  the  wives  of  the  min- 
isters. The  President  does  not  shake  hands, 
nor  do  any  of  those  receiving  with  him. 

The  Protocol  also  makes  the  music  and  the 
flowers  and  the  supper  of  due^impressiveness, 
the  official  world  is  as  splendid  as  at  a  court; 
and  the  rest  is  made  up  of  the  crushing,  push- 
ing ten  thousand  who  keep  the  governmental 
machine  in  motion.  You  see  extraordinary 
types.  The  men  are  all  in  evening  dress,  "It 
were  better  to  do  without  a  bed  in  Paris 
than  without  a  dress  coat,"  Guy  de  Maupas- 
sant made  one  of  his  characters  say.  But  all 
the  women  have  not  evening  gowns.  I  shall 
never  forget  one  who  looked  as  though  she 
had  been  upholstered  for  the  occasion,  in  just 
such  Utrecht  velvet  as  was  used  formerly  for 
furniture,  while  her  ornaments  were  worsted 
tassels  such  as  decorate  chairs  hanging  from 
various  parts  of  her  person.  But  the  crowd 
is  not  more  incongruous  than  the  palace  itself, 
a  background  of  pure  style,  strewn  with  a 
heterogeneous  collection  of  bric-a-brac,  relics 
of  all  the  administrations.  In  a  little  salon, 
which  was  once   Napoleon's   sleeping-room, 


172  PARIS  AS  IT  IS. 

there  is  a  priceless  tapestry,  after  cartoons  by- 
Raphael,  representing  the  judgment  of  Paris, 
which  once  belonged  to  Madame  de  Main- 
tenon,  and  was  cut  up  by  her  to  have  some 
clothing  put  on  to  the  Three  Beauties,  which 
she  considered  too  nude.  But  it  looks  down 
on  a  hearth-rug  of  modern  Beauvais,  where  a 
monstrosity  of  a  stuffed  lion,  by  Gerome,  re- 
poses in  a  bed  of  such  flowers  as  grow  on 
Berlin  wool-work. 

Everywhere  are  the  same  anachronisms.  A 
magnificent  vase  of  old  Sevres  is  side  by  side 
with  one  of  those  impossible  alabaster  clocks 
of  the  time  of  Louis  Philippe,  of  which  the 
French  Garde-Meuble  contains  an  inex- 
haustible supply  for  its  State  palaces  and  other 
buildings.  There  could  be  no  greater  con- 
trast than  that  between  the  old  tapestried 
chairs  in  the  private  salon,  once  used  famil- 
iarly by  Marie  Antoinette  and  Madame  Ade- 
laide, and  the  simple  bourgeois,  plain  mcrcs 
dc  famillc,  who  now  use  them;  and  from  the 
precious  carpets  on  the  floors  have  been  torn 
ofif  successively  the  fleurs  de  lys  and  crowned 
Ns,  to  put  in  their  places  emblems  of  the 
Republic. 


In  the  Ministries. 

The  greatest  goddess  of  France  is  her  "Ad- 
ministration," a  goddess  whose  temples  are 
called  "Grand  Alinisteres."  I  never  look 
at  one  of  these  without  a  feeling  of 
melancholy.  They  seem  to  me  nothing 
more  or  less  than  terrible  Molochs,  into 
which  are  thrown  every  year  hundreds  of  en- 
thusiastic boys  just  from  college,  to  be  given 
up  only  when  all  the  energy  and  initiative  and 
independence  have  been  crushed  out  of  them 
by  years  of  monotonous  routine,  passed  over 
eternal  papers.  The  full  meaning  of  the  word 
Administration  is  something  which  only  dawns 
upon  you  by  degrees,  if  you  live  in  France. 
You  know  that  your  postman  belongs  to  it, 
and  it  seems  natural.  But  little  by  little  you 
discover  that  the  Administration  means  not 
only  the  postman,  but  the  policeman,  and  the 
sweeper  of  the  streets,  and  the  custom-house 
officer,  and  the  china  painter  at  Sevres,  and 
the  school  teacher,  and  the  trained  nurse,  and 
the  tapestry  maker  of  the  Gobelins,  and  the 
cure,  and  the  mayor,  and  the  bishop,  and  the 
professor,  and  the  judge;  that  each  one  of 
these  is  an  integral  part  of  a  gigantic  machine 
173 


174  PARIS  AS  IT  IS. 

extending  from  one  end  of  the  country  to  the 
other,  made  up  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
employes,  whose  sole  centre  and  direction  is 
in  Paris. 

Generally  you  get  this  part  of  your  educa- 
tion either  by  coming  up  against  this  in  some 
way  yourself,  or  by  seeing  some  one  else  do 
it.  My  first  experience  of  the  kind  I  have 
never  forgotten.  It  was  in  a  hospital,  where 
I  had  a  friend  invalided,  but  not  laid  low,  and 
under  a  surgeon's  care.  The  place  was  the 
single  maison-dc-santc,  or  private  paying  hos- 
pital, in  Paris,  which  is  under  the  State.  The 
charges  in  it  were  something  like  twenty 
dollars  a  week,  everything  included.  When 
my  friend's  breakfast  came  up  in  the  morning 
there  was  no  sugar  for  the  coffee,  and  she 
asked  for  some.  "The  Administration  does 
not  give  sugar,"  was  the  reply.  She  asked 
for  butter  for  her  bread.  "The  Administra- 
tion does  not  give  butter,"  was  the  same  re- 
sponse. This  regulation  appeared  to  be 
purely  arbitrary.  The  Administration  gave 
certain  unexpected  things  with  lavishness; 
yet  neither  bribes,  threats  nor  prayers  could 
extract  a  bit  of  butter  or  a  single  lump  of 
sugar  from  the  institution  during  her  entire 
stay. 

Since  then,  how  many  times  have  I  picked 
up  the  Paris  Herald  to  find  from  the 
various    letters    with    which    the  ingenuous 


IN  THE  MINISTRIES.  175 

tourist  instructs  the  public  that  in  some  way 
he  has  run  up  against  this  same  vague  but 
mighty  force.  It  is  generally  through  some 
such  thing  as  a  detail  connected  with  the 
regulations  at  a  railway  station,  or  a  per- 
formance at  the  Comedie  Frangaise,  or  the 
sending  of  a  post-ofifice  order,  which  he  ap- 
parently seems  to  consider  has  been  in- 
vented for  his  particular  annoyance,  to 
infringe  on  his  rights  as  a  free-born  Ameri- 
can citizen.  He  has  never  seen  anything  of 
the  kind,  he  says,  in  the  glorious  old  town  at 
home  that  he  comes  from,  and  wonders  what 
they  would  think  of  it  there,  and  he  usually 
ends  by  giving  the  French  some  advice  on  the 
simplifying  of  their  arrangements  in  general, 
in  the  apparently  trusting  faith  that  a  sug- 
gestion from  some  advanced  person  is  all 
that  is  needed  to  make  a  change.  Little  does 
he  realize  that  every  one  of  these  petty  de- 
tails is  as  much  a  part  of  the  general  structure 
of  things  as  the  institution  of  the  President  of 
the  Republic,  and  that  you  might  almost  as 
well  try  to  change  the  movements  of  a  planet 
in  its  orbit  as  the  least  of  these.  Every- 
thing in  France  is  regulated  by  this  colossal 
organization,  which  looks  with  the  same  be- 
nevolent interest  not  only  after  such  great 
things  as  the  maintenance  and  execution  of 
the  old  laws,  and  the  new  ones  passed  by  the 
Chamber,  and  the  measures  ordered  by  the 


176  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

President,  and  the  decrees  of  the  Ministers, 
and  the  organizing  of  the  army,  but  such  de- 
tails as  the  kind  of  material  that  shall  be  put 
on  a  match  head — which  explains  why  French 
matches  never  strike — or  whether  a  mor- 
sel of  sugar  shall  be  comprised  in  the  re- 
past of  a  patient  in  a  hospital.  You  come 
to  feel,  in  time,  as  though  it  were  part  of  the 
integral  structure  of  things;  as  inseparably 
France  as  her  network  of  rivers. 

All  over  the  country  the  workings  of  this 
machine  are  precisely  the  same.  With  us, 
each  State  is  attached  to  the  soil  by  its  own 
fibres.  It  is  represented  at  Washington,  but 
it  can  live  independently.  In  France  every- 
thing is  regulated  from  Paris,  and  the  entire 
people  uphold  the  Administration,  because 
every  one,  either  in  himself  or  through  his 
son,  or  his  brother,  or  his  friend,  represents 
some  little  integral  part  of  it.  The  longer 
you  Uve  there  the  more  you  realize  that  the 
French  do  not  want  to  change  the  machine. 
They  are  willing  to  have  it  put  in  repair  every 
twenty  or  thirty  years,  and  to  introduce,  per- 
haps, a  few  modern  improvements,  but  they 
could  not  actually  conceive  of  any  other  way 
of  doing  things.  If  you  trepanned  the 
nation,  I  am  quite  sure  you  would  find  in 
the  construction  of  their  brains  little  coils 
of  ideas  somewhere  spelling  out  the  adminis- 
trative   language.       However    ironically    the 


IN   THE  MINISTRIES.  177 

Frenchman  may  utter  the  proverbial  phrase, 
"Our  Administration  which  is  the  envy  of 
Europe,"  you  may  be  very  sure  that  in  his 
heart  he  admires  it  religiously  and  respects  it 
profoundly. 

Why  has  it  stayed  when  so  much  has  gone? 
I  used  often  to  wonder.  There  are  excellent 
psychological  reasons  for  its  survival.  It  is 
stable,  unchanging;  everything  that  the 
French  are  not;  as  admirably  adapted  to  their 
needs  as  the  honey-comb  to  the  bees.  But 
I  am  quite  sure  its  real  hold  comes  from  emi- 
nently practical  reasons,  and  three  of  these  in 
particular.  The  first  is  the  special  kind  of  com- 
pulsory education  which  has  been  enforced  dur- 
ing the  last  twenty-five  years.  It  has  produced 
an  entire  generation  of  young  men  to  whom  a 
semi-classical  education  has  given  a  distaste 
for  trade  or  any  sort  of  business;  the  second 
is  the  establishment  of  universal  suffrage  and  the 
spoils  system,  so  that  every  Senator  and  every 
Deputy  needs  a  bone  of  some  sort  to  throw 
to  his  constituents,  and  would  have  to  in- 
vent places  if  they  did  not  already  exist;  and 
the  last  is  the  national  character  of  the  peo- 
ple and  their  intense  love  for  staying  quietly 
at  home.  They  must  ensure  to  themselves 
some  existence  which  will  let  them  stay  com- 
fortably in  France  to  the  end  of  their  days. 

It  is  hard  for  us  to  realize  how  difficult 
it  is  to  be  able  to  look  forward  to  an  assured 


178  PARIS   AS  IT  IS. 

existence  in  this  old  world,  where  every  place 
is  always  already  occupied.  Go  to  the  Halles, 
the  great  central  market,  some  morning  be- 
fore the  dew  is  yet  off  the  fruits  and  vege- 
tables, and  as  you  watch  the  workings  of  the 
enormous  machine  by  which  Paris  is  pro- 
visioned, think  that  the  right  to  sell  green 
groceries  there  descends  in  fief  from  gene- 
ration to  generation,  and  that  the  men  who 
auction  these  off  to  the  dealers  and  the  hotels 
all  over  the  city  stand  on  the  very  spot  on 
a  certain  pavement  where  the  buyers  who 
preceded  them  have  stood  in  direct  line  for 
over  two  hundred  years!  How  many  people 
are  looking  on  and  watching  for  the  moment 
when  anyone  shall  drop  out!  I  am  sure  that 
this  thought  of  dropping  out  at  home  is  one 
explanation  of  why  the  French  are  no  greater 
colonizers;  this  and  their  national  character, 
again.  Much  observation,  not  only  of  their 
characteristics,  but  of  the  English,  has  led 
me  to  deduct  another  reason  for  the  French 
lack  of  enterprise  in  colonizingfromtheattitude 
of  both  towards  the  foreigner.  Everything 
French  is  always  the  best  thing  to  every 
Frenchman,  as  everything  English  is  to  the 
Englishman.  The  difference  between  the 
two,  however,  is  that  to  differ  from  an  Eng- 
lishman is  to  be  in  the  wrong.  Then,  with  his 
belief  in  his  mission  for  imposing  his  point  of 
view  on  the  world,  it  becomes  his  moral  duty 


Under    the    lut'fel    Tower. 


Place    du    Chatelet,    X'ictory    Fountain. 


IN  THE  MINISTRIES.  179 

to  put  you  right.  But  to  dififer  from  a 
Frenchman  is  only  to  be  stupid,  and  the  best 
thing  to  do  with  stupid  people  is  to  leave 
them  alone.  When  a  country  is  neither 
French  nor  likely  ever  to  become  French, 
what  is  the  use  of  wasting  time  trying  to 
colonize  it?    It  is  much  better  to  stay  at  home. 

It  is  easy  to  see  why  it  would  hardly  be  con- 
sidered respectable  for  a  man  to  stay  at  home 
without  an  assured  place  in  a  highly  organized 
society  like  the  French;  and  therefore  it  be- 
comes quite  as  much  a  matter  of  concern  for 
parents  to  establish  their  sons  as  it  is  to  marry 
their  daughters. 

"What  are  you  going  to  be  when  you  are 
a  man?"  I  once  asked  the  charming  little  son 
of  one  of  my  French  friends. 

He  thought  for  a  moment.  "I  am  going  to 
be  either  a  coachman  or  a  bishop  or  a  wash- 
woman," he  answered,  finally. 

This  incongruous  selection  of  occupations 
was  natural  in  a  French  baby.  He  wanted 
to  be  a  coachman  because  he  loved  horses,  a 
bishop  because  of  the  splendor  of  the  vest- 
ments he  saw  in  church,  and  a  washwoman 
because  the  happy  blanchisseuses  knelt  by  the 
river  banks  and  dabbled  all  day  long  in  the 
water,  which  he  was  forbidden  by  his  mother 
to  touch. 

But  at  ten  you  will  find  this  love  for  horses, 
water    and    finery    transformed    in  the  aver- 


i8o  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

age  French  boy  to  a  burning  desire  to 
be  either  a  soldier  or  a  sailor.  Either  one  of 
these  is  the  vocation  of  almost  all  boys  of 
that  age.  It  is  then  that  his  mother  begins 
now  and  then  to  wear  a  frown  as  she  sits  over 
her  work,  and  the  father  to  shake  his  head. 
Naturally  they  do  not  want  to  thwart  the  im- 
perious genius  of  their  son — who  of  course 
has  genius;  but  soldiers  are  exposed  to  many 
dangers,  such  as  battles,  and  sailors  must 
live  far  from  home  and  are  at  the  mercy  of  the 
wave.  That  means  a  checkered  existence  for 
the  boy,  and  much  anxiety  for  his  parents  at 
the  end  of  their  days.  They  do  not  say  much, 
but  they  lead  him  on  to  push  as  far  as  possible 
his  studies;  to  take  a  bachelor's  degree,  and 
very  likely  to  read  for  the  bar,  and  pass  his 
examinations.  Meanwhile  he  has  enough 
leisure  to  see  a  little  of  student  life,  with 
an  illusion  of  independence. 

Then,  as  simple  soldier,  he  does  one  year 
of  military  service,  which  is  quite  enough  to 
disgust  him  with  the  profession  of  arms  for 
the  rest  of  his  days.  Finally,  at  twenty-one 
or  twenty-two,  he  finds  himself  face  to  face 
with  the  necessity  of  deciding  on  an  occupa- 
tion— and  his  father!  The  father  wears  his 
most  serious  air;  he  reads  his  son  a  lecture 
on  the  future;  and  he  ends  by  alluding  to  his 
friend  the  Deputy  so-and-so,  who  has  great 
influence  with  one  of  the  ministers,  or  to  an^ 


IN  THE  MINISTRIES.  i8i 

other  who  is  a  gros-bonnct  of  the  Adminis- 
tration. A  few  good  introductions,  an  easy 
examination,  and  in  only  a  short  time  the 
youth  may  be  settled  for  life.  The  boy  has  no 
experience  of  the  world  except  of  existence 
at  home.  How  can  he  be  expected  to  have 
personal  initiative  and  independence  when 
they  are  something  that  he  has  neither  in- 
herited nor  that  have  ever  been  taught  him? 
He  knows  nothing  about  money  except  the 
financial  problems  which  have  been  oflfered 
by  his  modest  allowance,  and  the  slender  sal- 
ary in  question  seems  enormous  compared 
to  any  sum  he  has  ever  had  the  handling  of 
before.  Perhaps,  more  than  anything  else,  he 
is  tempted,  too,  by  the  idea  of  having  a  de- 
fined position,  and  the  end  is  that  a  few 
months  later  he  is  one  more  recruit  grafted 
into  the  immense  army  of  functionaries.  The 
minds  of  his  parents  are  at  rest,  for  the  bread 
of  their  boy  is  assured. 

The  boy  takes  his  seat  at  his  desk,  and  in  the 
beginning  has  all  the  enthusiasm  of  his  years. 
He  gets  together  his  materials  to  l)uild  a 
bridge  to  the  moon  no  less  than  the  youth  of 
that  other  Republic  of  whom  Thoreau  wrote 
the  words;  and  then  added  that  as  middle- 
ages  man,  they  generally  concluded  to  build  a 
woodshed  with  those  materials.  All  young  men, 
when  they  first  go  into  a  Ministry,  expect  to 
be  journalists  outside  of  office  hours;  to  make 


i82  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

plays;  to  write  great  novels,  like  Guy  de  Mau- 
passant, who  was  also  a  functionary,  or  to  be 
remarkable  painters,  like  Rene  Billotte,  who 
was  another. 

Then,  gradually  the  greater  part  of  them  al- 
low themselves  little  by  little  to  become  hyp- 
notized by  the  regular  movement  of  the  ma- 
chine. They  fall  more  and  more  into  a  monot- 
onous routine,  broken  only  by  their  marriage 
possibly  with  a  daughter  of  their  chef,  and 
certainly  with  some  one  with  that  dot  which, 
on  general  principles,  a  w^oman  quite  right- 
ly to  my  mind  in  the  Old  World  brings 
to  marriage  in  order  to  take  her  share 
in  the  expenses  of  the  common  existence. 
If  they  achieve  their  highest  ambitions 
they  get  to  be  chefs  themselves;  and  final- 
ly, at  sixty  they  look  for  the  last  time  into  the 
tiny  mirrors  of  their  offices,  see  that  their  hair 
is  gray,  and  that  they  have  grown  old  without 
knowing  where  the  years  have  gone  to;  and 
then  they  go  ofif  into  some  little  corner  with 
their  pensions  of  four  or  five  thousand  francs 
a  year — to  die  soon  after  from  having  made  a 
change  of  ennuis! 

The  very  thought  of  the  machine  hypnotizes 
me  as  I  write  and  frame  the  monotonous  sen- 
tences describing  it  coming  from  the  monot- 
onous little  corners  of  my  brain  in  which  its 
details  are  stored.  If  so  much  generalization 
seems  to   make  an   exaggerated  picture,   re- 


IN   THE  MINISTRIES.  183 

member  that  the  functionaries  in  the  Cham- 
ber of  Deputies  outnumber  all  the  business 
men  and  agriculturists  and  manufacturers 
put  together,  and  that  some  one  has  lately  pub- 
lished a  statement,  with  statistics  to  prove  it, 
that  there  is  one  functionary  in  France  to  every 
ten  inhabitants.  From  this  he  draws  the  con- 
clusion that  the  dawn  of  the  Twenty-first  Cen- 
tury will  see  nothing  but  a  nation  of  employes. 
This  is  the  fantastic  menace  of  the  statistic 
fiend;  but  it  also  contains  in  it  the  warning 
voice  of  the  Cassandra. 

The  French  know  perfectly  well  themselves 
the  elements  of  decadence  which  lie  in  this  or- 
ganization. They  accepted  vigorous  arraign- 
ment of  it  inDemolins's  "Anglo-Saxon  Superi- 
ority" with  that  calm  with  which  we  say  the 
worst  possible  things  about  ourselves,  and  then, 
with  the  exception,  perhaps,  of  Jules  Lemaitre, 
everybody  promptly  forgot  the  book.  But  not 
knowing  too  well  how  to  do  without  the  ma- 
chine, they  compromise  on  a  general  cry 
against  the  present  system  of  education,  which 
makes  all  the  boys  ready  to  go  into  it.  A 
French  school-boy  is  to  me  the  most  dispirit- 
ing thing  in  the  country.  "Oh,  base-ball,  foot- 
ball, golf,  boating.  Junior  Proms,  cotillons,  or 
any  other  words  bringing  with  them  a  whifif  of 
the  strong,  breezy,  bracing  air  of  an  American 
college,  to  thee  I  sing!"  I  always  feel  Hke  say- 
ing as  I  look  upon  him.    The  Lycees  and  col- 


iS4  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

leges  are  doing  something  for  him  with  a 
movement  towards  athletics;  but  what  a  mel- 
ancholy sight  he  is  in  the  private  schools,  when 
he  takes  his  sad  promenade  through  the  Paris 
streets  with  his  companions,  marshaled  two  by 
two  like  a  girl's  boarding  school,  under  the 
charge  of  a  "pion"  such  as  Alphonse  Daudet 
once  was,  or   a   priest. 

The  boys  under  the  last  are  the  **good  Re- 
jiublicans  brought  up  by  the  Jesuit  fathers"  to 
whom  Abel  Hermant  alluded  in  his  play;  and 
they  are  one  of  the  elements  for  keeping  alive 
the  possibility  of  some  great  future  tragedy 
like  the  "aflfaire."  Most  of  them  will  probably 
go  into  the  army,  the  great  resource  for  the 
sons  of  the  nobility;  and  their  education  is 
keeping  alive  traditions  directly  opposed  to  the 
spirit  of  free  institutions,  and  the  Republic. 
As  surely  as  the  world  moves,  some  day  some 
great  crash  between  all  these  opposing  ele- 
ments that  can  instantly  be  taken  up  by  all  the 
politicians  on  both  sides,  will  again  be  in- 
evitable. The  best  educated  of  the  young  men. 
who  should  be  the  greatest  influences  to- 
wards an  intelligent  public  opinion,  will  not 
be  in  the  active  arena.  They  will  be  in  the 
Government,  which  means  outside  of  things. 
The  best  of  our  college  graduates  are  not  in 
politics  at  home,  it  is  true.  But  at  home  we 
have  an  intelligent  public  opinion.  The  French 
have  not. 


First  Cduimunicants. 


Coming   Out   from    iMass  at   St.   Germain   des   I'res. 


IN   THE  MINISTRIES.  185 

There  is  nothing  to  make  a  visit  to  the  tem- 
ples of  the  great  governmental  Moloch,  into 
which  go  so  much  youth,  especially  interesting. 
They  are  all  alike;  great  gray  stone  structures, 
with  sombre,  echoing  courts,  as  impersonal  and 
immutable  in  appearance  as  though  Finance, 
Agriculture,  and  the  others  in  proportion  as 
they  had  grown,  had  projected  for  themselves 
visible  shells.  Within  are  labyrinths  of  bare 
white  corridors,  relieved  only  by  gray  arrows 
pointing  to  inscriptions  such  as  "Direction 
Generale,"  "Bureau  des  Ordonnancements," 
with  here  and  there  an  occasional  upholstered 
door,  indicating  the  oflfice  of  a  "grand  chef." 
Beware  how  you  speak  to  the  garqons  or  office 
boys  you  meet  in  these  long  corridors!  They 
will  only  answer  your  questions  if  you  address 
them  in  terms  of  the  most  exquisite  politeness. 
They  are  there  for  life.  They  are  functionaries 
as  much  as  the  Minister  himself,  and  have  this 
advantage  over  him  that  they  stay  on  when  the 
Government  falls,  while  he  goes.  The  con- 
cierge at  the  door  has  also  a  life  position,  as 
you  can  tell  by  the  calm  air  of  superiority  with 
which,  as  you  pass,  he  goes  on  reading  his  eter- 
nal newspaper  in  his  little  lodge,  tapestried 
with  keys,  without  so  much  as  honoring  you 
with  a  glance. 

A  friend  one  day  offered  to  take  us  tothe Min- 
istry of  Public  Instruction,  where  he  knew  some 
one  in  the  very  office  in  which  once  worked 


iS6  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

the  man  who  has  made  the  greatest  name 
of  all  the  functionaries,  Guy  de  Maupassant. 
The  idea  of  seeing  the  very  desk  on  which  was 
drafted  " Bottle  de  Siiif,"  and  the  room  from 
which  came  the  materials  for  "L'Heritage," 
tempted  us  like  a  pilgrimage,  and  we  went. 

The  old  office  of  the  great  writer  was  a  Httle 
place,  measuring  perhaps  twelve  feet  in  each 
direction,  whose  walls  were  entirely  covered 
with  green  paste-board  boxes  with  w^hite  la- 
bels which  stared  at  you  like  blinking  eyes.  It 
had  a  single  window  looking  out  over  the 
roofs.  By  leaning  over  you  could  just  catch 
sight  of  the  flight  of  stone  steps  leading  up  to 
the  hotel  of  the  Minister,  and  of  the  cockade 
of  his  coachman;  a  celebrated  coachman,  who 
had  driven  every  head  of  that  department  for 
twenty-five  years. 

There  were  three  inhabitants  in  the  room; 
a  pale  young  man  finishing  with  feverish  haste 
the  copying  of  a  letter  of  seventeen  pages  ex- 
plaining to  a  country  school  teacher,  wuth  many 
quotations  from  ministerial  circulars,  that  he 
had  made  a  mistake  of  twelve  centimes  in  his 
accounts;  a  thin  and  melancholy  ancient  "sous- 
off,"  whose  functions  w^ere  to  classify  corre- 
spondence, but  who  at  that  moment  was  en- 
gaged in  the  classifying  of  a  collection  of  post- 
age stamps  on  his  own  account;  and,  finally,  a 
jovial  personage,  who  we  were  told  was  a  lit- 
tle "touched"  and  was  only  kept  through  char- 


IN  THE  MINI  STRIPS.  187 

ity.  This  was  the  single  thing  which  could 
evoke  the  souvenir  of  poor  de  Maupassant, 
and  the  little  cage  was  interesting  only  as  an 
exact  model  of  all  the  other  little  cages  in 
which  hundreds  of  thousands  of  functionaries 
at  that  moment  were  doing  the  same  copying, 
transcribing  and  classifying. 

Other  celebrities  than  Guy  de  Maupassant 
have  gone  out  from  them,  however.  Among 
these  are  Andre  Theuriet,  the  novelist,  and 
Courteline,  the  writer,  and  Armand  Sylvestre. 
and  the  painter  Rene  Billotte,  of  whom  I  have 
already  spoken.  Huysmans,  the  author  of 
"En  Route,"  another  celebrated  functionary, 
upon  his  retirement  with  a  pension  went 
to  live  under  the  shadow  of  the  old  con- 
vent of  Ligurge,  and  has  just  become 
a  priest.  He  has  not  lost  for  this  a 
Frenchman's  esprit.  Lately  he  wrote  to  a 
friend  upon  a  sheet  of  paper  bearing  the  letter- 
head of  his  old  office:  "Ministcrc  de  Fln- 
tcricur;'  which  he  had  quaintly  changed  into 
"Mmistre  de  la  Vic  Intcricnre." 

To  think  of  the  years  in  which  such  hands  as 
that  were  occupied  in  writing  only  the  endless 
trivialities  of  administrative  detail!  I  once 
saw  an  illustration  of  the  kind  of  thing 
on  which  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior 
busies  itself.  In  a  little  corner  of  France 
some  cherry  trees  planted  on  the  public 
highway   bore  fruit,   which  no  one  gathered. 


i88  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

An  inhabitant  of  that  part  of  the  country  wrote 
to  Paris  and  offered  to  buy  the  cherries  of  the 
State.  He  made  his  demand  in  March,  so  as 
to  have  plenty  of  time  to  get  the  answer  before 
the  fruit  season.  It  came  at  the  end  of  No- 
vember. What  care  the  State  takes  of  her 
roads,  however;  how  endlessly  she  looks  after 
the  general  well-being  in  thousands  of  ways! 
You  feel  sometimes  as  though  existence  for 
the  French  were  one  great  personally-con- 
ducted tour,  where  everything  was  so  arranged 
and  planned  out  for  them  that  they  had  no  re- 
sponsibility, and  were  free  to  enjoy  the  scenery 
as  they  went  along.  This  great  organization, 
whose  roots  are  so  deeply  intertwined  in  the 
sub-soil  of  national  life,  keeps  the  country 
steady  at  bottom,  no  matter  what  agitations 
shake  her  surface.  And  its  iniquitous  pres- 
ence makes  "France"  a  very  real  and  palpable 
thing  to  her  people.  I  can  quite  believe  the 
story  of  the  peasant  who  was  found  at  the  door 
of  the  Chamber  asking  to  be  taken  to  "The 
State."  He  had  a  goose  in  the  basket  on  his 
arm,  he  said,  which  he  had  brought  as  a  pres- 
ent for  him. 


PART   III. 

THE  ART  LIFE  AND  ITS 
INSTITUTIONS. 


The  Museum  of  Chmy. 

I  never  see  the  Museum  of  Cluny  without 
wondering  why  someone  with  money  and 
taste  does  not  copy  it,  stone  by  stone,  to  make 
for  himself  a  princely  dwelling.  I  know  of 
no  more  beautiful  house  than  this,  in  which 
Gothic  architecture,  flowered  here  and  there 
with  Italian  Renaissance,  blossoms  upon  the 
ruins  of  the  old  Roman  palace  of  Julian  the 
Apostate. 

Cluny  was  the  first  bachelor  apartment 
house  that  was  ever  made,  I  fancy.  Bachelor- 
hood was  no  temporary  estate  with  the  abbes 
of  Cluny,  for  whom  it  was  built.  They  were 
younger  sons,  who  came  mto  the  church  irre- 
vocably with  their  coming  into  the  world,  and 
into  an  abbey  before  they  arrived  at  the  age  of 
reason.  They  practised  a  healthy  sort  of  Chris- 
tianity which  kept  their  souls  well  alive,  and 
appreciated  a  pied  a  terre  in  Paris.  This  was 
in  1490,  just  two  years  before  Columbus  real- 
ized his  idea  of  providing  on  a  colossal  scale 
footholds  for  the  world's  superfluous  sons, 
without  distinction  of  age.  These  cadets  of 
the  house  of  Bourdon  and  Ambroise  were 
grand  seigneurs,  intimate  friends  and  kins- 
191 


192  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

men  of  kings,, and  a  jolly  lot,  who  felt  no  re- 
morse at  leaving  the  details  of  their  profession 
to  their  monks,  while  they  donned  cuirasses 
under  their  long  robes,  cavalcaded,  and 
played  the  gallant  at  the  levee  of  the  king, 
their  relative. 

We  have  to  keep  well  in  mind  these  man- 
ners of  the  day  to  thoroughly  understand  the 
charm  of  this  old  palace,  which  comes  not 
only  from  the  exquisite  harmony  of  its  pro- 
portions, but  also  from  the  unexpectedness, 
the  contradictoriness  in  its  ornamentation,  the 
very  emblem  of  the  time  in  which  it  was  built. 
A  cathedral  is  frozen  music,  Coleridge  said. 
Mr.  Tom  Appleton  called  the  Boston  Art 
Museum  frozen  Yankee  Doodle.  Cluny 
might  be  called  frozen  fifteenth  century.  It 
is  at  any  rate  an  exact  symbol  of  that  epoch 
which  saw  everywhere  such  a  strange  min- 
gling of  contradictions;  the  century  in  which 
France  was  led,  and,  w'hat  is  more  curious 
still,  without  seeming  in  the  least  to  wonder 
at  it,  by  two  women  of  exactly  opposite 
types,  the  one,  Agnes  Sorel,  the  most  coquet- 
tish, frivolous  and  beautiful  of  her  sex,  the 
other,  the  purest  incarnation  of  religious  faith 
and  patriotism  the  world  has  seen,  Jeanne 
d'Arc. 

You  have  only  to  look  at  its  details  to  see 
this;  windows  filled  with  tracery  as  delicately 
wrought  as  lace  looking  down  on  a  crenelated 


THE   MUSEUM   OF   CLUNY.  193 

wall,  such  as  you  would  find  in  a  moated 
chateau;  a  Cupid  jocularly  striding  a  dolphin 
side  by  side  with  the  cockleshells  of  St. 
Jacques  and  a  cardinal's  hat;  a  gargoyle  gro- 
tesquely twisting  its  ape-like  head  which  has 
for  pendant  a  seraphim,  full  of  candid  grace. 
Even  the  old  device  that  for  five  hundred 
years  has  been  graven  in  the  court  is  am- 
biguous: "Servare  Deo  regnare  est,"  "To 
serve  God  is  to  reign,"  in  one  reading,  "To 
reign  is  to  serve  God,"  in  the  other.  Every- 
where you  come  on  the  unexpected;  and  this 
naive  mingling  of  profane  and  religious  does 
not  shock,  because  the  whole  combines  to  give 
a  perfect  impression  of  art,  and  has  the  har- 
mony of  all  really  beautiful  and  artistic 
things. 

Nevertheless  this  mediaeval  Gotliic  style,  in 
the  moments  when  I  do  not  take  it  for 
granted,  sets  me  perpetually  wondering  how 
mankind  was  ever  inspired  to  create  such  a 
thing.  It  is  taken  directly  from  nature,  while 
in  our  day  architecture  is  the  art  which  of  all 
arts  gets  the  least  from  nature.  This,  too, 
in  a  time  when  painters,  sculptors,  musicians 
and  writers  have  more  deliberately  broken 
with  traditions  and  gone  to  nature  for  their 
inspiration  than  ever  before.  In  the  Middle 
Ages,  however,  the  architect  as  well  as  the 
painter  had  his  sketch-book  and  noted  in  it 
religiously  anything  that  appealed  to  him  in 


194  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

natural  harmonies,  the  curves  in  the  Hnes  of  a 
mountain,  the  bend  of  a  plant  arrested  in  its 
growth  by  a  rock,  the  supple  movements  of  a 
fawn,  the  inspiration  given  by  a  forest  in  the 
pale  light  of  the  moon.  Then,  instinctively, 
no  doubt,  but  at  all  events,  justly,  for  the  sim- 
ple reason  that  he  was  sincere,  he  formed 
from  these  a  decorative  system,  based  on  the 
principles  of  nature's  designs.  He  himself, 
too,  was  a  master  builder,  and  his  workmen 
put  as  much  freedom  and  devotion  into  a 
single  capital  as  the  designer  of  the  building 
into  its  whole. 

To  feel  all  this  we  have  only  to  enter  the  lit- 
tle chapel  of  Cluny  on  the  second  floor.  How 
did  any  architect  ever  solve  such  an  extra- 
ordinary problem  as  that  of  giving  to  this  tiny 
room,  which  measures  scarcely  more  than 
eight  yards  in  each  direction,  the  grandeur  of 
a  cathedral  nave?  To  try  to  analyze  the 
means  by  which  such  an  impression  is  pro- 
duced would  be  like  trying  to  analyze  genius 
itself.  Is  it  from  this  niche  forming  an  altar 
projecting  from  the  wall  like  the  prow  of  a 
ship,  and  delicately  illuminated  with  a  mys- 
terious light  by  the  jeweled  panes  set  in  the 
tiny  windows  in  the  form  of  hands  in  prayer? 
Or  is  it  from  the  single  pillar  in  the  centre, 
springing  with  the  delicate  grace  of  a  foun- 
tain to  expand  in  laces  and  interlaces  upon  the 
vault   overhead?     It  is   certainlv   from  both 


THE   MUSEUM   OF   CLUNY.  195 

of  these,  and  a  hundred  other  details  besides, 
trifling  in  themselves,  but  which,  growing  one 
out  of  the  other,  and  all  together  into  one, 
each  exactly  in  the  place  to  which  it  belongs, 
become  transcended  as  a  whole  into  some- 
thing grand  and  imposing,  with  the  very- 
majesty  of  nature  itself. 

It  only  needs  this  one  chapel,  or  Cluny  as 
a  whole,  to  learn  the  secret  of  Gothic  architec- 
ture, and,  indeed,  of  all  the  styles  that  suc- 
ceeded it.  Style  was  something  free  and  nat- 
ural in  those  days.  It  was  determined  by 
the  character  and  expression  to  be  given  to 
the  ensemble  of  a  structure,  and  so  it  was 
that  a  man  could  build  a  house  and  a  church 
with  the  same  style,  and  have  the  one  look 
like  a  house,  and  the  other  like  a  church; 
whereas  in  our  time  religious  feeling  must 
invariably  be  incarnated  in  something  Gothic 
or  Byzantine,  while  splendor  in  the  way  of  a 
dwelling  means  to  us  a  copy  of  one  of  the 
chateaux  of  Touraine,  or  the  Trianon  of  Ver- 
sailles, set  down  in  one  of  our  modern 
streets.  The  architect  is  no  longer  free.  You 
would  almost  say  that  his  art  was  a  sort  of 
patented  thing  in  which  the  principal  requisite 
was  to  have  the  right  brand;  that  carrying 
everything  before  it  in  the  market  at  present 
being  the  one  stamped  "ficole  des  Beaux 
Arts." 

Since  we  are  given  to  copying,  however. 


196  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

why  not  transplant  Cluny?  During  its  five 
hundred  years  of  existence  it  seems  to  have 
been  considered  a  fitting  home  for  all  sorts 
and  conditions  of  people.  Soon  after  it  was 
finished,  the  abbes  put  it  at  the  disposition  of 
the  kings  of  France,  w'ho  lodged  in  it  many 
distinguished  guests:  Mary  of  England, 
widovv'  of  Louis  XII.;  James  the  Fifth  of 
Scotland,  many  Papal  nuncios,  an  Abbess 
of  Port  Royal,  and  finally,  at  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  the  celebrated  astrono- 
mers, Lalande  and  Messier.  With  the  Revo- 
lution, like  all  the  property  of  the  State,  it 
became  national,  and  it  afterward  passed 
through  different  hands  until,  in  1843,  it  was 
sold  to  the  State  by  M.  du  Sommerard,  with 
the  rare  collection  of  bibelots  and  works  of 
art  which  he  had  collected  in  it,  and  it  became 
a  Museum. 

It  is  to  me  the  most  sympathetic  and  human 
of  all  the  museums — this  old  hotel,  left  to  us, 
as  Victor  Hugo  said,  "for  the  consolation  of 
the  artist."  As  a  whole,  it  is  the  most  perfect 
bibelot  in  existence.  I  love  it  in  its  interior 
and  exterior,  and  everything  that  belongs  to 
them  both,  in  all  their  satisfying  harmony; 
one  of  the  most  perfect  expressions  of  beauty, 
and  certainly  of  the  lives  of  men  and  women 
of  the  past  which  the  world  has  to  offer  us. 
As  you  wander  through  it  you  seem  to  be 
admitted  to  the  very  intimacy  of  a  Due  de 


THE   MUSEUM   OF   CLUNY.  197 

Guise,  or  of  one  of  those  Queens  who  trailed 
through  the  rooms  the  white  weeds  that  they 
wore  as  mourning  for  their  royal  husbands. 
In  that  room  called  "la  chambre  de  la  Reign 
Blanche"  here  is  the  bed,  all  dressed,  with  its 
coverlid  embroidered  with  flowers  and  ara- 
besques; the  books  of  hours  are  still  open  at 
their  illuminated  pages,  near  a  covered  chair 
with  arms  wide  spread,  in  order  to  lodge  the 
heavy  robes  of  brocade;  upon  the  wrought 
andirons  in  the  gigantic  fireplace  lie  the  great 
logs  of  other  days ;  in  the  twilight  in  the  back- 
ground glimmer  the  panels  of  the  bahuts  of 
pear-tree  or  of  thuya,  wdiere  Hercules  and 
Theseus  in  relief  combat  with  complicated 
chimeras;  through  the  open  doors  comes  a  re- 
flection from  the  high  polish  of  an  armoire, 
or  of  a  rare  faience.  Just  so  it  must  have 
been  in  the  time  of  a  Francois  ler  or  a  Henri 
IV.  And  the  idea  of  this  arrangement  is 
not  simply  to  make  an  amusing  historical  re- 
production. It  is  to  give  to  each  object  its 
true  value,  to  bring  out  its  real  significance 
in  form  and  color,  so  that  even  the  most  mod- 
est bibelot  becomes  an  illustration  of  the  law 
in  art  that  a  tone  has  value  only  through 
others  that  are  beside  it.  A  red  near  a  yellow- 
is  quite  a  different  thing  from  a  red  near  a 
gold  tone  like  a  blue  or  green;  and  the  same 
rule  holds  good  in  form.  Look  at  the  Salle 
des  Faiences,  and  I  am  sure  you  will  find,  as 


198  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

I  do,  something  positively  exhilarating  in  the 
effects  in  these  rare  porcelains.  A  pure,  cold 
blue  in  a  bit  of  Spanish  faience  has  next  it  a 
pale  yellow,  a  deep  blue  a  deep  yellow;  and 
notice  this  grotesque  black  china  creature  in 
the  line  above  which  so  accents  the  whole!  As 
your  eye  glances  along  the  quiet  richness  of 
the  Palissy  potteries  at  the  end  of  the  room, 
and  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  century  gres, 
to  fall  suddenly  upon  the  bright,  living  green 
of  the  bits  of  Chelsea  ware  in  the  vitrine  next 
the  balustrade,  the  whole  place,  at  that  instant, 
seems  to  exist  only  to  make  you  feel  it  prop- 
erly. 

I  love  the  sudden  sensation  of  inspiration 
that  comes  as  you  go  from  the  room  filled 
with  the  Luca  della  Robbias  into  the  one 
beyond  in  which  is  the  old  glass;  all  one  side 
of  it  filled  with  tiny  diamond  panes,  against 
which  sky  and  leaves  outside  are  in  a  net, 
while  from  stained  medallions  set  in  here  and 
there  the  light  apparently  falls  through  green 
emeralds,  or  blue  lapis  lazuli,  and  sapphires 
upon  the  slender-stemmed,  iridescent  things 
in  the  vitrines.  Where  you  may  steep  your 
soul  in  color,  however,  is  in  the  room  at  the 
end  of  the  second  fioor,  hung  with  those 
Flemish  tapestries  of  the  time  of  Louis  XII., 
in  which  mysterious  ladies  attended  by 
languishing  courtiers  pursue  their  tranquil 
occupations  in  a  delicious  landscape  of  dull 


:,om   of   Francis   I.,    Cluny   Museum. 


The    Garden    of    Cluny. 


THE   MUSEUM   OF   CLUNY.  199 

golds  and  faded  reds  and' greens  and  pome- 
granates to  make  a  background  for  the 
strangely  magnificent  objects  which  are  every- 
where in  the  place.  A  mass  of  dull  splendor 
is  the  Flemish  altar-piece  of  gold,  wrought 
into  the  figures  of  the  Saviour  and  saints,  and 
two  little  kings  kneeling  at  their  feet,  which 
was  given  in  1079  to  the  Cathedral  of  Basle. 
And  in  the  gold  crowns  of  the  old  Gothic 
king  Recesventhus,  how  the  delicacy  of  their 
lovely  filagree  work,  hung  Vv^ith  cabochon 
amethysts  and  aquamarines,  is  intensified  by 
contrast  with  the  massive  bands  for  encir- 
cling those  mighty  Gothic  heads!  The  whole 
gains  so  in  value,  too,  by  being  placed  ex- 
actly in  the  spot  in  the  room  where  it  belongs, 
opposite  the  window,  so  that  the  light,  again 
tinted  by  jeweled  medallions,  streams  through 
the  gold  and  the  precious  stones.  The  minia- 
ture gold  boat  of  the  Emperor  Charles  V.  in 
the  corner  must  have  once  been  used  as  a 
centrepiece  for  his  table,  according  to  the 
fashion  of  his  time.  Paul  Veronese,  I  remem- 
ber, puts  such  a  boat  into  the  "Marriage  of 
Cana"  at  the  Louvre.  Orchardson  had  one 
a  few  years  ago  in  his  Salon  picture,  "The 
Little  Duke."  And  the  chess-board  in  gold 
and  rock  crystal,  called  that  of  St.  Louis,  has 
served  as  pastime  to  many  kings. 

It  would  be  a  mistake,  however,  to  think 
that  the  greater  part  of  the   18,000  bibelots 


200  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

which  make  up  the  collection  of  Cluny  were 
either  royal  or  princely  objects.  Though  you 
can  scarcely  find  one  that  is  not  a  specimen  of 
the  most  delicate  art,  they  belong  almost  en- 
tirely to  everyday  life  and  the  life  of  private 
individuals.  I  remember  the  French  work- 
man Bazin  that  Robert  Louis  Stevenson 
quotes  in  his  "Inland  Voyage,"  with  whom  he 
recommends  a  talk  as  an  antidote  to  the  visit 
of  Zola's  marriage  party  to  the  Louvre.  He 
had  delighted  in  the  museums  in  his  youth. 
"One  sees  there  such  little  miracles  of  work," 
he  said.  "That  is  what  makes  the  good  work- 
man. It  kindles  a  spark."  And  it  seems  to 
be  a  fact  that  up  to  the  time  of  the  nineteenth 
century  in  France,  and  indeed  in  almost  all 
civilized  countries,  the  simplest  workman  had 
an  innate  sense  of  elegance  of  form,  and 
beauty  of  detail,  and  even  the  most  common- 
place buyer  had  it  like  him.  From  the 
fifteenth  century  to  the  time  of  the  Revolu- 
tion, though  there  was  sometimes  a  fancy  for 
the  horrible,  as  in  the  monsters  of  the 
churches,  absolutely  nothing  was  made  in 
France  that  was  ugly,  even  for  the  most 
commonplace  uses.  This  we  can  see  from 
Cluny,  which  contains  the  most  perfect  col- 
lection in  existence  of  everyday  things.  Look 
at  the  charming  series  of  Idcks  and  keys,  of 
window  fastenings  and  knockers  for  doors  on 
the  second  floor,  so  beautifully  wrought  that 


THE  MUSEUM  OF  CLUNY.  201 

even  iron  has  delicacy.  They  were  simply 
picked  up  at  random  all  over  France.  Some 
were  found  in  the  fields,  and  others  in  the  bed 
of  the  Seine,  and  they  came  from  the  ordinary 
houses  of  the  people.  I  can  remember  seeing 
myself  a  beautiful  lock  some  years  ago,  on 
the  door  of  a  simple  peasant's  cottage  of  the 
fifteenth  century,  in  the  little  village  of  Tallois, 
in  Savoy.  Is  it  not  delightful  to  think  of  a 
time  when  art  was  so  popularized?  To  con- 
vince yourself  of  this  still  further,  notice  these 
old  keys  of  the  sixteenth  century,  ending  in 
an  arched  capital  wrought  in  openwork,  and 
surmounted  with  chimerical  figures;  or,  bet- 
ter yet,  the  lock  of  this  old  German  bahut  of 
the  fifteenth  century,  on  which  are  repre- 
sented St.  John,  St.  James,  and  St.  Barbara, 
and  all  of  whose  nails  as  well  as  its  keyhole 
are  masked  with  winged  cherubim. 

A  little  farther  on  the  specimens  of  faience 
in  the  room  of  the  porcelains  are  only  the 
basins,  the  plates,  the  sugar  bowls,  the  veg- 
etable dishes  of  everyday  use,  but  there  is  not 
a  single  one  of  them,  whether  it  comes  from 
Moustiers,  Marseilles,  Strasbourg,  Rouen, 
Nevers,  Delft,  or  Raeren,  which  is  not  beau- 
tiful in  form,  and  pleasant  to  the  eye  through 
the  harmonious  arabesques  that  decorate  it, 
or  the  ornaments  of  fruit  or  animal  that  form 
fresh  and  charming  reliefs  in  the  shining 
enamel  of  the  porcelain,    In  the  vitrjne  of 


202  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

Palissy  potteries  notice  particularly  the  figure 
of  a  young  nurse  and  child.  How  simple  and 
natural  it  is,  what  a  real  little  work  of  art,  and 
yet  we  know  beyond  a  doubt  through  an  old 
book,  the  m/nwirs  of  one  of  the  physicians  of 
Louis  XIII.,  that  it  was  originally  nothing 
but  a  doll  for  the  little  king  which  cost  only  a 
few  sous.  I  could  go  on  multiplying  ex- 
amples of  this  sort,  in  armoires,  chairs,  tables, 
arms,  stufifs,  but  will  only  point  out  one  more. 
In  the  last  room  of  the  second  floor — the 
gold  room — in  two  vitrines  full  of  some  of 
the  latest  acquisitions  to  the  Museum,  is  a 
whole  collection  of  feminine  trinkets  and  toi- 
let articles.  Each  one  seems  to  have  an  indi- 
vidual elegance  and  beauty,  and  to  be  inter- 
esting from  an  artistic  point  of  view,  which 
seems  to  be  quite  a  different  standpoint  from 
that  which  so  often  apparently  governs  our 
dressing-tables  nowadays.  You  would  say 
this  was  that  if  one  woman  had  sixty  pieces 
of  silver,  another  must  have  sixty-five. 

"How  can  all  these  little  marvels  in  every^ 
day  things  be  explained?"  I  often  ask  myself 
as  I  wander  through  Cluny.  The  feverish  life 
of  to-day,  in  which  labor  is  so  dear,  and 
machinery  has  so  largely  replaced  handwork, 
has  naturally  led  us  to  be  above  everything 
else  practical,  and  to  want  things  that  are  use- 
ful and  cheap.     But  that  would  not  account 


THE   MUSEUM   OF   CLUNY.  203 

for  the  great  taste  that  in  other  days  pervaded 
all  classes. 

As  I  believe  that  all  art  is  the  direct  result 
of  some  high  intellectual  and  spiritual  im- 
pulse, this  general  artistic  standpoint  must 
liave  come  in  the  beginning,  I  think,  from  the 
inspiration  given  by  the  crusades.  The  wave 
of  religious  feeling  which  swept  with  them 
over  Europe  produced  great  artists  and  arch- 
itects and  churches;  and  the  people,  frequent- 
ing the  churches,  their  susceptibilities  quick- 
ened by  this  feeling,  were  educated  into  a  uni- 
versal love  for  beauty  and  consequently  for 
art.  This  survived  till  the  Revolution  came, 
with  its  leveling  tendencies,  and  the  present 
century  has  gone  on  finishing  its  work. 

This  is  why  Cluny  remains  to  the  world 
a  delight,  even  though  it  contains  no  chef 
d'oeuvres,  like  the  "Pilgrims  of  Emmaus,"  the 
"Winged  Victory,"  or  the  Venus  of  the 
Louvre.  I  always  feel  as  though  I  had  dis- 
covered it,  and  nuist  make  it  known  to 
others;  and  when  I  see  the  tourist  taking  it 
sadly,  as  he  generally  does  his  museums,  it 
is  with  diflficulty  I  resist  the  impulse  to  rush 
up  and  try  to  make  it  known  to  him. 

I  should  at  least  like  to  say  to  the  men 
wandering  about  with  Baedekers  or  with 
guides:  "Look  at  the  guardian's  hats!  They 
are  one  of  the  few  things  instituted  by  the 
great  Napoleon  that  you  will  see  in  Paris  now. 


304  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

They  were  the  RepubUcan  transformation 
under  the  Directoire  of  the  old  seigneurial 
hunting  hat  of  the  time  of  Louis  XVI.  The 
incroyablcs  wore  them,  and  Napoleon  put  them 
into  the  army.  Now  they  are  worn  in  France 
only  by  those  guardians,  the  gendarmes,  the 
generals,  and  the  pupils  of  the  ficole  Poly- 
technique." 


The  Little  Mtcsetwis. 

Paris  is  a  city  of  museums.  You  find  them 
everywhere,  of  all  kinds,  for  every  sort  of 
study.  The  great  Museum  of  the  Louvre,  it- 
self, is  only  a  suite  of  museums,  a  collection  of 
collections;  each  so  valuable  that  a  single  one 
would  make  the  glory  of  a  great  capital.  From 
age  to  age  have  been  gathered  into  it  the 
flower  of  the  artistic  and  archaeological  riches 
which  France  has  been  heaping  up  for  so  many 
generations.  The  national  palaces,  the 
churches  and  the  private  houses  were  so 
gorged  with  beautiful  things  in  the  centuries 
of  splendor,  that  in  spite  of  revolutions,  and 
the  ruin  of  old  families,  and  the  destruction  of 
old  things  when  new  fashions  came  in,  a  great 
hoard  of  treasures  has  been  handed  down  to 
the  present  day.  and  with  the  Republic  has  be- 
come the  property  of  the  State,  which  means 
that  of  everybody.  Everybody  is  richer  than 
anybody,  the  saying  is;  and  nowhere  is  this 
truer  than  in  Paris. 

His  capital,  too,  is  always  increasing.     This 

is  not  only  through  the  appropriations  which 

his  business  manager,  the  State,  makes  every 

year,  but  through  constant  gifts  and  legacies. 

205 


2o6  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

These  are  the  result  of  patriotic  generosity,  or 
the  wish  for  posthumous  fame,  of  above  all 
the  longing  in  the  donor  to  preserve  works  of 
art  which  have  often  been  family  souvenirs 
that  he  has  loved  all  his  life.  All  roads  in 
France  lead  to  Paris,  the  great  absorber  of 
the  artistic  and  intellectual  force  of  the  entire 
country;  and  no  one  museum  would  ever 
have  been  large  enough  to  hold  the  steady 
flow  of  treasures  and  historical  relics  which 
have  poured  into  the  capital  for  ages  past. 
So  all  over  the  city  have  sprung  up  the  de- 
lightful places  called  "les  petits  musees." 

You  may  live  in  Paris  for  years  without 
particularly  noticing  many  of  these.  The 
Musee  Guimet,  the  Musee  des  Religions, 
for  instance,  on  the  Place  dTena,  is  one 
of  my  neighbors,  and  it  almost  goes  with- 
out saying  that  I  passed  it  constantly  for 
two  years  without  ever  thinking  of  go- 
ing in.  Then,  one  day  some  one  sent  me  an 
invitation  to  a  Buddhist  service  to  be  held 
there  by  a  Grand  Lama  from  Thibet;  one  of 
those  real  Grand  Lamas  from  that  old  convent 
of  Lhassa,  which  the  outsider  never  ap- 
proaches without  meeting  instant  death.  The 
Trans-Caspian  railway  had  sent  him  to  Russia, 
and,  hearing  that  there  was  a  Musee  des  Re- 
ligions in  Paris,  he  supposed  it  a  temple  of  his 
cult,  and  the  laws  of  his  religion  obliged  him 
to  come  and  hold  a  service  there.    It  was  one 


THE   LITTLE   MUSEUMS.  207 

of  those  exotic  sights  that  you  get  nowhere  but 
in  a  great  capital  and  made  a  deep  impression 
on  mc  through  its  contrasts;  on  one  side  all  of 
the  Parisian  world  that  the  little  amphithe- 
atre could  hold;  the  diplomats  and  savants, 
and  other  men  of  mark,  and  beautiful  and  dis- 
tinguished women;  and  on  the  other  the 
strange  figure  of  the  priest,  standing  before  an 
altar  symbolizing  the  mystic  number  seven, 
making  his  genuflexions  and  manipulating 
his  gleaming  scarf  of  orange-red  silk  with 
an  expression  of  almost  sublime  abstraction 
on  his  face. 

I  wondered  how  such  a  temple  came  to  be 
there,  and,  on  inquiring  afterward,  found  that 
the  entire  museum  was  nothing  but  the  collec- 
tion of  a  M.  Guimet,  of  Lyons.  He  made  a 
fortune  in  selling  dyes  of  his  own  invention, 
and  used  his  leisure  to  collect  precious  things 
connected  with  the  history  and  practice  of  the 
dilTerent  religions  of  the  world.  His  son  went 
on  with  this  after  the  father's  death,  and  one 
day  offered  the  whole  collection  to  the  City 
of  Paris,  who  built  a  large  museum  to  hold 
it,  called  it  after  the  name  of  the  donor,  and 
put  in  the  son  as  director,  who  is  still  there. 

How  many  people  you  meet  in  France  who 
collect,  and  what  a  price  is  put  upon  freedom 
here;  upon  time  and  liberty  for  following  con- 
genial occupations!  "I  am  glad  there  are 
people  in  the  word  unselfish  enough  to  be 


2o8  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

great  capitalists,  to  manage  railways  and  cor- 
porations for  my  benefit,"  a  Frenchman  said 
to  me  not  long  ago.  "They  leave  me  free  to 
spend  my  time  on  collecting  and  other  things 
which  really  interest  me." 

So  many  of  the  museums  are  only  collec- 
tions abandoned  to  the  State  in  their  entirety 
by  different  individuals  imbued  with  this  spirit. 
The  Musee  Cernuski  is  one  of  these.  It  is 
made  up  of  a  great  number  of  objects  pertain- 
ing to  Oriental  art  which  the  political  econo- 
mist Cernuski  brought  back  from  his  travels 
in  Asia  and  left  to  the  State,  with  his  own 
beautiful  hotel  in  which  to  put  them.  Gustave 
Moreau,  the  painter,  followed  his  example,  and 
the  greater  part  of  his  works  have  been  classi- 
fied with  pious  care  by  his  disciples,  in  the 
house  where  he  once  lived,  which  has  become 
the  Musee  Gustave  Moreau. 

If  you  tried  to  describe  all  the  little  individ- 
ual museums  within  the  great  museums  which 
have  been  given  to  the  State  in  this  way  to 
complete  the  national  collections,  it  would  take 
not  only  the  whole  of  one  book,  but  of  many. 
To  mention  only  a  few,  however,  what  is  said 
to  be  the  richest  collection  of  Chinese  ceramics 
in  the  world  is  that  in  the  wing  of  the  Louvre 
lying  along  the  Seine.  It  was  given  only  a  few 
years  ago  by  a  M.  Grandidier,  who  still  goes 
on  classifying  it  and  perfecting  it  at  his  own 
expense.     Two-thirds  of  the  lovely  things  in 


t^^m 

In  the  Garden  of  the  Tuileries. 


The  Tuilerie  Gardens,  Rue  de  Kivoli  side. 


THE  LITTLE  MUSEUMS.  209 

the  department  of  the  art  of  the  Renaissance 
in  the  Louvre  were  the  princely  gift  of  a  sim- 
ple employe  of  the  administration,  named 
Sauvegeot,  who  collected  them  at  a  time  when 
Renaissance  art  was  disdained  by  nearly  every- 
body else.  In  the  section  of  painting  the  en- 
tire collection  La  Caze  was  left  in  1870  by  a 
Dr.  Louis  La  Caze,  who  lived  in  the  happy 
time  when  he  could  become  the  possessor  of  a 
chef  d'oeuvre  like  Rembrandt's  "Bethsabee" 
for  6,000  francs.  At  Cluny  the  salle  devoted 
to  objects  pertaining  to  the  Jewish  religion  is 
a  gift  of  the  Baroness  Nathaniel  de  Rothschild. 

In  the  Luxembourg  almost  all  of  the  salle  of 
impressionist  painting,  of  such  value  for  the 
study  of  French  art,  is  a  legacy  of  the  painter 
Caillebotte.  And,  of  course,  if  we  went  back 
very  far  in  this  sort  of  history  we  should  come 
to  the  royal  collections  which  were  the  founda- 
tions of  the  museums  themselves. 

When  we  come  to  think  of  knowing,  or  even 
getting  a  fairly  satisfactory  idea  of  the  great 
ensemble  of  these  precious  collections,  I  am 
afraid  the  only  way  to  do  it  would  be  to  em- 
ploy some  such  prescription  as  that  of  Dr. 
Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  for  seeing  the  British 
Museum:  "Take  lodgings  next  door  to  it — in  a 
garret,  if  you  cannot  afford  anything  better — 
and  pass  all  your  days  at  the  Museum  during 
the  whole  period  of  your  natural  life.  At  three- 
score and  ten  you  will  have  some  faint  concep- 


210  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

tion  of  the  contents,  significance  and  value  of 
this  great  British  institution."  He  could  easily 
tell  people,  he  said,  how  not  to  see  it.  When  they 
had  a  spare  hour,  let  them  drop  in  and  wander 
around.  In  fact,  he  seems  to  have  come  away 
from  the  galleries  with  the  same  feeling  such 
places  so  often  give  the  rest  of  us,  of  leaving 
in  our  memory  nothing  but  a  confused  mass  of 
impressions,  much  as  the  soldiers  who  sack  a 
city  go  off  with  all  the  precious  things  they 
can  snatch  up,  muddled  into  clothes — bags  and 
pillow-cases.  Dr.  Holmes  was  an  old  man 
when  he  wrote  this,  but  Hawthorne  in  his 
prime  spoke  in  the  same  way,  I  remember.  He 
was  so  tired  when  he  saw  the  Elgin  marbles 
that  he  wished  they  were  all  pounded  up  and 
made  into  mortar,  so  that  he  should  not  feel 
obliged  to  look  at  them. 

There  is  one  way  of  always  being  able  at  least 
to  enjoy  these  Paris  museums,  and  that  is  to 
consider  them  not  as  isolated  collections,  but 
as  all  belonging  to  one  great  family,  of  which 
each  member  helps  to  complete  or  explain 
or  introduce  the  other,  so  that  even  a  few 
minutes  with  any  one  fits  in  with  our  general 
acquaintance  or  intimacy  with  all,  and  gives 
us  pleasure.  It  is  a  family,  too,  whose  inti- 
mate history  we  are  allowed  to  know,  from  its 
early  beginnings  down  to  its  living  types  of 
to-day,  and  nothing  else  can  teach  us  so  much 
about  what  is  the  most  interesting  thing  in 


THE   LITTLE   MUSEUMS.  211 

this  world  for  study,  the  endless  forms  of  de- 
velopment and  expression  of  the  human 
mind. 

To  show  how  one  museum  completes  an- 
other, we  need  only  take  French  painting, 
whose  history  can  be  studied  in  Paris  from  its 
very  earliest  origins.  But  we  should  have  a 
very  imperfect  idea  of  the  decorative  sumptu- 
ousness  belonging  to  the  period  of  Louis  XIV. 
which  was  sought  for  by  such  painters  as  Le- 
brun,  Mignard  and  Rigaud,  if  we  were  satis- 
fied simply  to  look  at  their  work  strung  out  in 
line  in  a  salle  of  the  Louvre.  We  must  go  to 
Versailles — so  near  Paris  that  it  may  be 
counted  as  a  Parisian  museum — and  see  the 
works  of  that  time  installed  in  the  very  places 
for  whose  decoration  they  were  intended.  The 
same  thing  is  true  for  the  time  of  Louis  XV. 
and  Louis  XVL 

The  painting  of  the  time  of  the  Revolution 
has  some  curious  specimens,  which  we  must 
look  for  at  the  Musee  Carnavalet,  side  by  side 
with  the  armoire  from  the  Bastilc,  the  flags  of 
the  national  guards,  the  vitrines  of  uniforms  of 
the  "incroyables"  and  the  "merveilleuses,"  if 
we  want  to  appreciate  the  transition  they  mark 
between  tlie  art  of  a  century  ago  and  that  of 
to-day.  As  for  contemporary  painting,  it  is 
clear  that  the  Luxembourg  is  the  indispensable 
sequel  to  the  Louvre;  but  in  its  turn  it  is  com- 
pleted by  the  Musee  de  la  Ville  de  Paris,  at 


212  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

Auteuil,  and  the  galleries  of  the  Hotel  de  Ville, 
the  only  places  in  which  you  can  see  a  deco- 
rative ensemble  of  Puvis  de  Chavannes. 

I  have  already  said  that  Oriental  art  was 
divided  between  the  Louvre,  the  collection 
Grandidier  and  the  Musee  Cernuski.  But  to 
these  must  be  added  the  Musee  des  Religions, 
where  there  is  a  complete  series  of  the  potter- 
ies used  in  the  religions  of  India,  China  and 
Japan;  and  the  Musee  de  Cluny,  which  con- 
tains a  magnificent  collection  of  the  faiences  of 
Rhodes.  The  finest  arms  and  armor  in  France 
are  in  the  Louvre,  the  Musee  d'  Artillerie, 
Cluny,  and  for  very  early  times,  in  the  Museum 
of  St.  Germain. 

As  to  the  history  of  the  mohilier — beds,  ta- 
bles, stools  and  candlesticks — so  intimately  al- 
lied to  that  of  the  other  arts,  we  should  know 
nothing  about  it  at  all  if  we  judged  of  it  only 
by  a  State  bed  at  the  Louvre,  or  a  Boule  ar- 
moires.  We  must  study  it  successively  at  Cluny 
up  to  Louis  XIIL,  at  the  Musee  du  Garde- 
Meuble  from  Louis  XIV.  to  Napoleon  I.,  and 
at  Carnavalet  for  the  First  Empire  and  the 
Revolution.  For  the  history  of  hangings  we 
have  a  series  of  tapestries  at  the  Musee  des 
Gobelins. 

And  even  all  this  great  number  of  varied  and 
beautiful  specimens  would  not  be  enough  to 
evoke  the  entire  history  of  the  meiible  if,  scat- 
tered about  everywhere,  in  almost  every  house, 


THE   LITTLE   MUSEUMS.  213 

we  did  not  find  what  might  be  called  living 
types  of  all  these  successive  styles  which  have 
served  workmen  as  models.  In  the  beginning 
I  said  that  Paris  was  a  city  of  museums,  but 
perhaps  this  is  not  quite  accurate.  The  whole 
of  Paris  is  nothing  but  one  great  museum. 


Les  Invalides. 

Louis  XIV.,  a  contemporary  of  the  author 
of  some  of  the  most  fantastic  fairy-tales  ever 
written.  Perraut,  the  writer  of  "Asses'  Skin," 
"The  Sleeping  Beauty  in  the  Wood"  and  "The 
Blue  Bird,"  would  have  treated  it  as  a  more 
fantastic  fairy-tale  still  if  anyone  had  told 
him  that  less  than  a  century  after  his  reign  the 
throne  of  France  would  escape  from  the  Bour- 
bons to  fall  into  the  hands  of  a  little  officer 
from  Corsica. 

What  would  he  have  said  if  someone  had 
gone  on  to  predict  that  under  the  auspices  of 
one  of  his  own  descendants,  Louis  Philippe,  this 
same  soldier  of  fortune  would  one  day  be  in- 
terred in  that  very  palace  of  the  Invalides 
which  he  had  built  as  a  magnificent  monument 
to  the  military  glory  of  his  own  reign? 

All  this  has  been  made  possible  by  those  two 
great  Icvelers,  death  and  time.  Not  only  is  no 
one  indignant,  but  no  one  is  even  surprised 
now  at  seeing  the  imperial  eagle  by  the  side  of 
the  royal  sun.  More  than  that,  the  imperial 
eagle  has  even  eclipsed  the  royal  sun  with  the 
shadow  of  its  wings;  for  who  thinks  of  Louis 
214 


LES    INVALIDES.  215 

XIV.  at  the  Invalides?  No  one  goes  there  but 
to  see  the  tomb  of  the  Great  Emperor. 

It  was  in  1840  that  the  ashes  of  Napoleon 
were  brought  to  Paris.  They  were  carried  to 
their  last  resting-place  on  a  chariot  drawn  by 
twenty-four  horses  harnessed  four  abreast,  and 
caparisoned  with  violet  velvet.  On  either  side 
of  these  walked  under-officers  of  the  Guard, 
bearing  the  standards  of  eighty-six  depart- 
ments. All  the  way  the  great  bourdon  of  Notre 
Dame,  tolled  only  for  kings  and  emperors, 
sounded  out  its  solemn  voice.  In  the  midst  of 
the  Guard  walked  two  Marshals,  an  Admiral, 
and  General  Bertrand,  who  had  come  on  from 
St.  Helena.  To  the  General  Louis  Philippe 
handed  the  Emperor's  sword,  with  the  words: 
"General  Bertrand,  place  Napoleon's  sword 
upon  his  coffin."  And  General  Bertrand 
obeyed,  with  tears  streaming  down  his  cheeks. 
Then  General  Gourgaud,  also  in  tears,  placed 
the  Emperor's  gray  cocked  hat  next  his 
sword;  and  thus  all  that  was  left  of  the  great 
genius  who  was  not  only  the  greatest  con- 
queror, but  also  the  greatest  slayer  of  men, 
found  its  eternal  repose. 

To-day,  under  the  gilded  dome  you  will  see 
pilgrims  from  all  parts  of  the  world  who  have 
come  to  look  at  the  Emperor's  tomb.  Lean- 
ing over  the  marble  balustrade,  silently  they 
look  down  into  the  round  hole  of  the  crypt 
upon  the  gigantic  sarcophagus  of  blood-red 


2i6  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

stone.  Around  it  are  twelve  great  victories, 
sculptured  by  Pradier,  in  the  form  of  twelve 
female  figures,  holding  in  their  hands  funeral 
wreaths  and  palms;  and  twelve  bundles  of 
flags  taken  at  Austerlitz.  In  the  cold  light 
which  fills  the  place  the  twelve  stone  god- 
desses take  the  aspect  of  phantoms,  and  the 
standards  the  pale  tone  of  faded  flow^ers.  It 
is  an  admirable  setting  for  this  mighty  sarco- 
phagus, with  its  cover  suggesting  a  lion's 
claws  in  repose. 

In  spite  of  the  fact  that  certain  details  show 
a  want  of  taste, — such,  for  instance,  as  the  yel- 
low-green and  violet  mosaic  of  the  floor, — and 
that  there  is  too  much  theatrical  striving  for 
effect  in  the  artificial  blue  light  which  illumi- 
nates the  tomb,  opposed  to  a  flood  of  yellow 
light  falling  upon  the  altar  opposite,  you  feel, 
nevertheless,  a  choking  of  the  throat  as  you 
look,  from  the  ever-poignant  emotion  of  stand- 
ing in  presence  of  the  dust  of  what  was  once 
so  great.  But  as  you  turn  away  your  eyes  fall 
upon  the  inscription  placed  on  the  door  of  the 
crypt:  "I  desire  that  my  ashes  repose  on  the 
banks  of  the  Seine,  in  the  midst  of  that  French 
people  whom  I  have  so  loved."  If  you  are  like 
me,  you  can  not  help  a  slight  feeling  of  regret 
that  this  last  wish  of  the  Emperor  was  not 
taken  more  literally.  I  could  have  wished  that 
his  mausoleum  had  been  raised  on  the  very 
edge  of  the  Seine,  at  the  other  end    of    the 


Napoleon's  Tomb  at  the  Hotel  cies  Invalides. 


LES    INVAUDES.  217 

Champs  de  Mars,  in  the  form  of  an  immense 
monumental  stone,  upon  which  the  sculptor 
had  carved  nothing  but  the  cocked  hat,  the 
gray  redingote,  the  sword  of  the  officer,  and 
the  sceptre  sown  with  bees,  of  the  Emperor 
I  am  not  a  lover  of  the  Pantheons  of  great 
men,  and  it  does  not  seem  to  me  fitting  that 
Xapoleon  should  have  been  put  in  the  house  of 
Louis  XIV.  Louis  Philippe,  perhaps,  was 
actuated  by  some  such  idea  as  that  which  in- 
spired the  celebrated  history  of  Napoleon  by 
the  Jesuit,  Pere  Loriquct.  He  treated  the 
Emperor  simply  as  a  general;  and  the  con- 
quest of  Europe  was  spoken  of  only  as  a 
series  of  campaigns  undertaken  in  the  service 
of  Louis  XVIIL  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  have 
heard  that  Louis  Philippe  did  afTect  to  con- 
sider Napoleon  only  as  a  link  in  an  inter- 
rupted monarchy,  and  that  in  showing  this 
honor  to  the  founder  of  a  new  dynasty  his 
idea  was  to  add  to  the  glory  of  his  own 
ancestor. 

When  you  are  most  moved  in  Les  Invalides, 
however,  is  not,  to  my  mind,  in  the  midst  of  all 
these  complicated  mortuary  splendors,  but 
when  in  the  ^luseum  of  Artillery  adjoining 
you  stand  before  the  cocked  hat  and  gray  red- 
ingote that  Napoleon  actually  wore  on  the 
battlefield,  the  swallow-tail  coat  of  Austerlitz, 
and  the  dressing-gown  of  St.  Helena.  It  i? 
these  faded  and  moth-eaten  frarnients  which 


2i8  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

bring  us  closest  to  him,  and  move  us  more  by 
their  simplicity  than  everything  else  by  its 
magnificence. 

You  may  say  the  same  for  the  armor  of 
Louis  XIV.,  in  an  adjoining  room,  so  astonish- 
ingly modest  for  a  sovereign  so  great,  es- 
pecially by  the  side  of  the  gilded  armor  of  those 
princes  of  the  Renaissance,  Frangois  ler,  Henri 
III.,  Charles  IX.  Truly,  the  greatest  men 
are  the  simplest.  And  what  most  touches  us 
among  all  the  things  that  man  has  made  is 
what  brings  us  closest  to  man. 


The    Mode. 

The  Mode  lives  in  Paris  in  the  Rue  de  la 
Paix.  Who  installed  her  there,  where  she 
came  from,  and  why  she  has  always  preferred 
Paris  to  any  other  home,  is  something  I  only 
succeeded  in  satisfying  myself  about  lately. 
Her  principal  associate  seems  to  be  art.  The 
French  always  say,  "I'Art  et  la  Mode."  They 
link  the  two  together  as  though  they  had 
some  relation;  and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  when 
we  look  back  over  their  history  they  seem  both 
to  have  followed  pretty  much  the  same  lines. 
In  the  time  of  the  Second  Empire,  for  instance, 
when  all  art  was  artificial,  the  mode  put  on 
hoop-skirts.  Then  art  gradually  took  nature 
for  her  inspiration,  and  mode  simply  gathered 
her  petticoats  more  and  more  closely  about 
her  and  followed  on.  Now,  pretty  much  all 
she  pretends  to  do  is  to  drape  in  some  sort  of 
way  the  lines  of  the  human  figure.  She  used 
to  include  sewing.  But  art  doesn't  sew.  That 
is  the  reason  why  the  new  Paris  frock  some- 
times comes  to  pieces. 

I  used  to  wonder  which  of  these  two  came 
first,  as  in  the  eternal  problem  of  the  owl  and 
the  eggs.  "When  I  think  of  the  beauty  of  the 
219 


220  rARlS   AS   IT  IS. 

full-fledged  owl,"  Froude  made  the  bird  of 
Minerva  say  upon  this  subject,  "I  should  say 
it  was  the  owl.  But  when  I  consider  my  own 
childhood,  I  am  inclined  to  think  it  was  the 
egg:'  History  I  found  quite  powerless  to  en- 
lighten me  upon  this  in  respect  to  art  and 
mode.  In  the  reign  of  Louis  XIV.  art  was 
pompous;  and  so  was  mode.  So  was  every- 
thing, for  that  matter,  woman  herself;  at  least, 
the  only  sort  of  woman  that  either  of  those  two 
ever  took  any  notice  of.  It  was  only  the  offi- 
cial woman,  the  w^oman  of  the  court,  that  they 
considered  worthy  of  taking  into  account.  In 
the  epoch  of  Louis  XV.  which  do  you  say  was 
the  earUer,  the  pleat  or  Watteau?  It  was  a 
wanton,  voluptuous  time,  and  the  style  for 
everything  and  everybody  was  to  be  dans  Ic 
lachc,  as  the  French  say.  Did  the  painter  get 
those  loose,  flow*ing  robes  from  the  women;  or 
did  he  invent  them,  and  the  women  follow  on? 
By  the  time  the  reign  of  Louis  XVI.  was  in 
full  swing  Rousseau  had  started  a  great  craze 
for  the  country  woman,  the  child;  everything 
that  was  simple  and  pastoral.  Mode,  always 
an  extremist,  went  in  for  nothing  else.  She 
thought  of  nothing  but  fichus,  garden  hats, 
baby  shoes.  On  every  occasion  she  insisted 
on  playing  the  part  of  the  guileless  shepherdess. 
In  those  days  she  had  a  much  less  fickle, 
changeable  character  than  now.  She  remained 
the  same  for  ten  years,  twenty  years,  at  a  time. 


THE  MODE.  221 

All  the  women  bowed  down  to  her  blindly. 
There  was  no  personal  taste;  no  such  thing 
existed.     Fashion  was  an  absolute  monarch. 

Oddly  enough,  no  photographs  nor  draw- 
ings of  her  were  made  in  the  early  times.  Her 
counterfeit  presentment  was  seen  in  a  life-size 
doll  which  was  dressed  in  the  latest  style  of 
Versailles  or  the  Palais-Royal  and  called  La 
Poupce  dc  la  Rue  Saint-Honore.  Then  repli- 
cas of  this  were  sent  to  England,  Germany, 
Italy  and  Spain  and  set  up  before  the  eyes 
of  the  courts,  very  much  as  the  Buddhists  and 
the  Brahmists  set  up  their  goddesses.  Cather- 
ine de  Medici,  I  learned  from  the  French 
archives,  had  sixteen  of  these  dolls,  and  she 
dressed  them  in  mourning  after  the  death 
of  her  husband  to  correspond  with  her  black- 
hung  walls.  It  was  not  until  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century  that  some  ingenious  per- 
son conceived  the  idea  of  getting  up  whole 
newspapers  devoted  to  nothing  but  mode,  and 
called  fashion  journals.  In  the  early  adver- 
tisements of  these  it  was  said:  "Dolls  are  al- 
ways imperfect  and  very  dear;  while  at  best 
they  can  give  but  a  vague  idea  of  the  fashions." 
Some  of  the  figures  in  these  early  fashion  pa- 
pers were  exquisite.  If  you  want  to  see  any  of 
them  to  go  to  the  Muse  Carnavalet.  They  are 
really  artistic  and  thoroughly  charming  in 
color.  The  new  French  fashion  journals  had 
an  immense  influence  on  Europe.     Mode  was 


222  P.1RIS   AS   IT   IS. 

French  by  birth.  She  had  an  Itahan  relation 
or  two,  but  they  were  stiff,  grandiloquent  crea- 
tures, who  stalked  around  in  palaces  and  got 
themselves  up  to  represent  their  parts,  what- 
ever they  imagined  those  were.  In  the  time 
of  Henry  IV.  there  were  some  Italian  ateliers 
for  mode  at  Fontainebleau.  But  she  was  purely 
French,  as  I  said  before.  She  became  a  great 
queen,  and  anyone  who  has  read  the  first  chap- 
ter of  this  book  will  understand  why.  with 
such  a  universal  standard  of  taste  in  France, 
everybody  was  ready  to  be  influenced  by  her. 
Look  now  at  a  French  fete,  or  function  of  any 
sort.  Everybody  is  en  toilette,  and  there  is  not 
a  woman  in  the  country,  even  the  humblest  I 
imagine,  who  does  not  have  something  pretty 
to  put  on  poitr  sortir.  Feminine  French  in- 
stinct could  never  feel  itself  jarring  on  the 
landscape,  and  inventive  genius  and  delicate 
taste  in  dress  have  been  from  all  time  natural 
gifts  of  the  French  people.  Through  the  fash- 
ion papers  the  fame  of  this  French  mode 
spread  all  over  Europe  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. Every  country  became  subject  to  her, 
and  tributary  to  the  commerce  and  industry  of 
the  French  capital. 

There  were  no  dressmakers,  as  we  under- 
stand the  word,  in  that  day.  There  were  mer- 
chants. There  was  a  nonimee  Bertin  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  who  seems  to  have  got 
herself  a  good  deal  talked  about.     There  was 


The   Flower   Market. 


In  a  Fiacre. 


THE  MODE.  223 

the  little  milliner,  the  dealer  in  what  were 
called  '"fanfreluches,"  all  sorts  of  feminine  tri- 
fles. The  great  high  priest  of  mode  was  the 
coififeiir;  we  find  famous  artists  in  that  line, 
such  as  Legros,  Frederic  and  Leonard;  and 
they  adapted  not  only  the  whole  art  of  archi- 
tecture to  their  hair-dressing,  but  every  new 
craze  in  society.  Mode,  who,  as  we  have  seen, 
always  went  in  for  everything,  even  insisted  on 
wearing  the  new  discovery  of  vaccination  in 
some  way,  and  Legros  invented  for  her  the 
coiffure  a  rinociilatiou.  Soon  every  lady  in 
Paris  wore  on  her  head  an  allegory  symbol- 
izing the  triumph  of  this  new  discovery, 
through  a  serpent,  a  club,  a  rising  sun,  and  an 
olive  tree  covered  with  fruit.  Much  more  re- 
markable still,  however,  must  have  been  those 
ladies  crowned  with  coifYures  representing 
English  parks,  with  nothing  forgotten;  mead- 
ows, trees,  babbling  brooks,  and  even  a  flock 
of  sheep  grazing.  All  these  strange  fancies 
you  can  find  in  the  old  prints  of  the  Biblio- 
theque  Nationale. 

I  have  spoken  of  thp  reign  of  Louis  XIV.  As 
is  natural  to  suppose,  Napoleon  paid  great  trib- 
ute to  mode,  who  was  a  queen  after  his  own 
heart.  He  obliged  the  generals  and  other 
members  of  his  court  to  give  their  wives  plenty 
of  money  for  dress,  and  himself  paid  great  at- 
tention to  the  toilettes  of  the  court  ladies.  Na- 
poleon had  not  a  fine  taste,    and    what    best 


224  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

pleased  him  was  magnificence;  frocks  loaded 
with  diamonds  and  precious  stones.  Dur- 
ing his  time  the  great  coiffeur  was  Mich- 
alon,  who  drove  a  cabriolet  with  a  ne- 
gro behind,  and  charged  a  louis  for 
dressing  a  woman's  head.  It  was  in 
that  day  that  the  celebrated  trial  between  the 
hairdressers  and  the  wigmakers  came  off, 
when  the  latter,  jealous  of  the  coiffeurs,  tried 
to  keep  them  from  practicing  their  art.  The 
coiffeurs  triumphed.  It  is  curious  to  see  the 
records  of  this  famous  case.  Hairdressing  was 
one  of  the  liberal  arts,  having  for  its  aim  the 
representation  of  beauty  in  the  same  way  as 
the  poet,  the  painter  or  the  sculptor.  Women 
were  never  so  badly  dressed  as  in  the  time  of 
Louis  Philippe,  and  in  the  Second  Empire  all 
art  was  false,  as  I  said  before.  And  this  brings 
us  near  enough  to  the  present  day  for  us  to 
get  things  at  first  hand.  From  that  time  on  it  is 
no  longer  natural  for  one  to  personify  mode. 
She  takes  an  entirely  different  aspect  in  my  im- 
agination. In  that  day  there  arose  a  Louis  XIV. 
in  dressmaking,  who,  oddly  enough,  was  an 
Englishman.  His  name  was  \\'orth.  Worth 
was  the  father  of  modern  dressmaking.  It  was 
he  who  had  the  idea  of  centralization.  A  mod- 
ern dressmaking  house  is  also  a  house  for 
stuffs,  laces,  passementeries,  embroideries,  a 
thousand  and  one  fancies  in  material  decora- 
tion.    Worth  was  not  an  artist;  he  thought  of 


THE  MODE.  225 

the  dress  and  not  the  female  figure.  "//  a  com- 
pris  les  robes;  il  n'a  pas  compris  la  fcmmc," 
as  an  authority  with  whom  I  was  once  talking 
put  it.  Worth  forced  and  stimulated  every 
branch  of  industry  pertaining  to  feminine 
things,  and  whole  new  houses  sprung  up  for 
specialties.  All  the  various  parts  of  the  dress 
were  specialized  also,  so  that  now  every  dress 
turned  out  from  a  great  house  represents  the 
work  of  at  least  ten  special  workmen;  one  for 
the  sleeves,  for  instance ;  one  for  the  collar,  one 
even  for  the  facing. 

The  whole  sociological  evolution  is  so  intri- 
cate, one  part  so  reacts  upon  another,  that, 
strangely  enough,  a  curious  new  element  en- 
tered into  fashions  with  the  rise  of  fortune 
in  dressmakers.  The  sons  of  these  great 
wealthy  heads  of  houses  were  entirely 
different  types  of  individuals  from  their 
fathers — purely  business  men.  We  find 
many  courtly  old-fashioned  gentlemen  among 
these  dressmakers  of  the  old  school,  of 
which  M.  Doucet,  pere,  was  an  example;  but 
there  were  no  artists.  The  idea  was  still  al- 
ways the  dress,  not  the  lines  and  delicate  har- 
monies and  nuances  of  color,  as  it  is  to-day. 
We  are  now  in  the  domain  of  fact,  however. 
It  is  easy  to  learn  from  the  great  authorities  of 
the  mode  just  how  fashions  are  made;  and,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  fashion  follows  the  general  soci- 
ological evolution,  especially  in  art.  Art  comes 


226  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

first.  A  universal  knowledge  of  art  in  France 
forms  a  universal  standard  of  taste;  through 
this  women's  ideas  and  fancies  are  formed;  the 
dressmakers  are  simply  mediums  for  the  ex- 
pression of  the  passing  prominent  ideal. 

M.  Jacques  Doucet,  the  second  of  the  old 
house  of  the  Rue  de  la  Paix,  was  the  founder 
of  the  last  school  of  art  in  fashions.  His  father 
had  made  a  fortune,  and  the  son,  a  man  of  thor- 
oughly artistic  temperament  and  remarkable 
taste,  became  the  friend  of  the  impressionist 
painters,  like  Monet,  Manet,  etc.  At  one  time 
he  was  just  about  to  start  a  fashion  paper  with 
colored  plates  done  by  Monet  and  Miss  Cas- 
satt.  It  was  M.  Jacques  Doucet  who  brought 
all  the  formulas  of  the  art  of  the  day  into 
woman's  dress;  the  line,  contrasts  and  har- 
monies of  color,  for  instance.  The  Salon  for 
this  art  is  the  stage. 

In  half  the  theatres  in  Paris  you  found  the 
stage  was  nothing  else  but  a  Salon  for  mode. 
Nothing  is  played  in  them  but  society  plays 
written  for  toilettes,  and  the  galaxy  of  pretty 
and  elegant  actresses  who  wear  them  so  de- 
lightfully. Where  is  the  simplicity  of  the  great  ac- 
tress of  the  Franqais,  Mile.  Mars,  for  instance, 
with  her  tiny  account  book  in  puce-colored  silk 
marked  "Souvenir"  in  seed  pearls,  and  such 
entries  as:  Expenses  for  the  month  of  Octo- 
ber: 12  fr.  for  galloons;  13  fr.  for  a  carpet;  20 
fr.  for  a  powder  pufT;  7  fr.  for  sundries.     What 


THE  MODE.  2^7 

a  long  way  from  that  to  one  single  gown  for 
an  actress  of  the  Vaudeville  or  the  Gymnase 
to-day;  some  such  thing  as  mousseline  de  soie 
hand-painted  by  a  Salon  artist,  incrusted  with 
the  rarest  lace  and  embroidered  with  seed 
pearls.  The  "varnishing  days"  of  these  frocks 
are  great  Parisian  events.  All  Paris  is  present 
at  a  fashionable  premiere,  while  the  great 
dressmaker  sits  in  his  loge  and  watches  with 
mingled  pride  and  misgiving  the  effect  of  his 
creations  on  the  sensitive  Parisian  public. 

It  is  curious  to  see  how  everything  in  art 
passes  into  fashions.  Here  is  the  history  of 
one:  Every  great  house  has  attached  to  it  its 
artists,  its  designers,  who  have  special  genius 
for  mode,  and  not  only  make  the  sketches,  but 
see  them  put  into  execution.  With  a  man- 
nikin  and  a  premiere  they  drape,  pin,  match 
colors,  combine  harmonies,  till  the  idea  of  the 
dress  is  sketched  on  the  living  model.  Mode 
does  not  aim  to  do  much  fine  sewing  now- 
adays. Once  the  impression  is  there,  fashion 
is  satisfied.  I  once  happened  to  see  one  of 
these  designers  making  a  model.  It  was  of 
black  mousseline  de  soie  over  an  interlining 
of  soft  grey  mousseline  de  soie,  and  charming 
in  shape  and  line.  Tlie  designer,  you  could 
see,  was  not  satisfied.  Something  was  want- 
ing. She  sent  for  mousseline  in  all  tints,  veiled 
her  lining  first  with  blue,  then  rose,  then 
mauve,  which  under    the  black  made  a  faint 


228  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

iridescence.  The  eye  was  satisfied,  and  a  new 
fashion  was  born.  All  the  great  furnishers  of 
Paris  went  to  work  making  rainbow  gauzes 
and  other  iridescent  things.  All  that  came 
from  Loie  Fuller's  influence  on  art.  She 
came  just  at  a  moment  when  the  impression- 
ists had  trained  the  eye  to  nuances;  she  embod- 
ied this  whole  movement.  A.\\  this  reacted  on 
dressmaking. 

M.  Jacques  Doucet  in  mode,  Mme.  Reboux 
in  millinery,  have  been  two  great  moulders  of 
this  mode.  But  fashion  is  ever  capricious,  vol- 
atile, changeable,  in  these  days.  Other  great 
creators  came  up,  such  as  Paquin  and  Carlier, 
for  instance,  like  new  artists  and  men  of 
letters.  Everybody  studies  the  old  models.  At 
Carlier's  they  will  show  you  rare  old  books 
picked  up  on  the  quays  and  in  old  shops 
which  give  all  the  models  in  mode  since  first 
there  was  a  fashion  in  bonnets.  Sumptuous 
and  fascinating  palaces  are  these  great  dress- 
making houses  to-day  where  in  a  background 
of  pure  style  the  daintiest  women  of  the  world 
congregate  in  an  atmosphere  of  color,  ele- 
gance, luxury  and  art. 


The  Studios. 

We  speak  of  the  great  family  of  artists,  and 
as  a  matter  of  fact  the  artists  in  Paris  form 
a  great  family,  in  the  sense  that  they  all  have 
certain  common  traits.  They  get  pretty  much 
the  same  sort  of  education  in  the  studios, 
have  much  the  same  aim  in  life,  which  is  to 
win  fame  through  their  art,  and  have  a  gen- 
eral horror  of  politics,  of  bureaucracy,  and  of 
the  "bourgeois,"  as  such.  As  in  all  families, 
among  them  there  are  the  grandfathers,  cov- 
ered with  honors,  whom  the  younger  genera- 
tions chafT,  and  who  revenge  themselves  by 
declaring  that  everything  was  better  in  the  old 
times.  Then  there  are  the  fathers,  beginning 
to  turn  gray,  who  cannot  resign  themselves 
to  the  thought  that  their  fame  is  on  the  wane, 
and  go  about  reiterating  the  ideas  they  were 
the  first  to  launch,  but  which  long  ago  be- 
came common  property.  There  are  the  sons, 
from  thirty-five  to  forty-five,  in  the  prime  of 
life  and  the  full  force  of  their  powers.  And 
there  are  the  young  men,  full  of  hope,  audacity 
and  supreme  disdain  for  everything  that  has 
gone  before  them.  Quite  apart  and  by  him- 
self was  Puvis  de  Chavannes,  who  up  to  the 
229 


230 


PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 


very  moment  of  his  death  went  on  creating 
chef-d'oeuvres  in  which  there  was  not  the 
sHghtest  sign  of  waning  force,  and  living  so 
absorbed  by  his  poetic  reveries  that  he  was 
entirely  unconscious  of  the  monastic  simplic- 
ity of  his  surroundings,  or  of  the  degree  to 
which  he  towered  above  his  contemporaries. 
In  this  great  family  it  is,  on  the  whole,  the 
men  of  from  thirty-five  to  forty-five,  in  the 
prime  of  life,  who  are  the  most  interesting.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  many  of  the  grandfathers, 
and  even  some  of  the  fathers,  never  were  quite 
what  their  reputations  made  them.  They 
were  "formed"  in  the  second  Empire,  in  that 
time  of  artificiality  and  bad  taste  in  art  when 
Puvis  was  laughed  at,  bottles  of  ink  were 
thrown  at  the  statues  of  Carpeaux,  when 
Whistler,  Claude  Monet,  Ribot,  Manet,  all 
the  painters,  in  short,  who  went  directly  to 
nature  for  their  inspirations,  were  refused  at 
the  Salons.  What  is  left  of  these  over-esti- 
mated reputations?  Decorations,  autographs 
of  kings  and  princes,  and  popularity  with  the 
people  who  measure  talent  by  official  honors, 
and  the  patent  to  immortality  given  by  the  title 
of  Academician.  For  many  years  most  of  them 
have  stood  still.  M.  Bouguereau,  for  instance, 
is  tranquilly  going  on  painting  precisely  the 
same  nymphs  and  cupids,  in  precisely  the  same 
tones  of  cold-cream,  that  he  made  thirty  years 
ago.    M.  Bonnat  paints  presidents  of  the  Re- 


THE  STUDIOS.  «3i 

public  year  after  year,  each  more  chocolate  in 
tone  than  the  last.  M.  Gerome  seems  to  have 
turned  from  infantile  scenes  which  look  as 
though  they  had  been  punched  out  of  the  can- 
vas only  to  make  sculpture  that  is  equally  un- 
interesting and  equally  uninspired. 

When  we  come  to  the  fathers  we  find  they 
show  the  efifects  of  the  impulse  toward  sincer- 
ity and  naturalism  which  came  with  the  Re- 
public; but  many  of  these  men  of  talent,  and 
often  of  great  talent,  apparently  gave  up  try- 
ing to  create  at  least  fifteen  years  ago,  and 
since  then  keep  repeating  themselves.  The 
evolution  of  art  has  gone  on  around  them;  it 
has  left  them  turning  in  the  same  place.  Some 
of  them,  the  portrait  painters  in  particular, 
seem  to  have  given  themselves  up  to  the 
pure  joy  of  making  money.  We  still  find 
many  historical  painters.  They  have  pro- 
gressed in  the  sense  that  they  paint  new 
subjects.  M.  Jean  Paul  Laurens,  an  admira- 
ble painter  of  historical  scenes,  has  gone  from 
the  Middle  Ages  to  the  time  of  Napoleon. 
They  do  not  seem  to  realize,  however,  that  it 
is  not  the  subject,  but  the  genre,  that  has  gone 
by.  The  impressionists  have  so  accustomed  us 
now  to  finding  light  and  color  vibrating  in  all 
pictures,  as  they  do  everything  in  nature  itself, 
that  the  artificial  painting  of  history  no 
longer  delights  us.  More  than  that,  it  even 
shocks  us  a  little;  just  as  an  artificial  stage 


232  PARIS  AS  IT  IS. 

setting  seems  coarse  by  the  side  of  real  fields 
and  real  woods. 

Charming  paintings  of  real  fields  and  real 
woods  we  do  find  from  some  of  the  older 
men,  evidently  excellent  pupils  of  Bastien 
Lepage.  But  Bastien  Lepage  died  young.  If 
he  had  lived  he  would  surely  have  been  the 
first  to  profit  by  the  impressionists  and  put 
more  color  and  warmth  into  his  delicate,  ethe- 
real grays.  Much  as  I  enjoy  Roll  and  Raphael 
Collin,  I  always  wish  they  had  not  stopped  at 
Bastien  Lepage. 

What  a  change  has  come  over  the  spirit  of 
landscape  painting  in  these  last  years.  A  half  a 
century  ago  landscape  painting  was  literary. 
When  Guizot  ordered  for  himself  from  Rous- 
seau a  view  of  the  Chateau  de  Broglie,  where 
he  had  spent  some  time  with  his  wife,  who 
had  died,  he  asked  the  painter  to  make  it  "of 
a  sad  and  grave  character,  in  harmony  with 
his  feelings."  It  is  rare  that  a  literary  man 
of  great  breadth  does  not  find  a  literary  in- 
terest in  a  great  landscape  even  now.  Puvis 
de  Chavannes's  "Summer"  Melchior  de 
Vogue  called  "A  Social  Evangel."  In 
Courbet's  "Les  Demoiselles  du  Bord  de  la 
Seine"  Prud'hon  found  a  "romance  of  the 
contemporary  woman."  Poussin  and  Claude 
Lorrain  generally  put  literary  interest  into 
their  pictures.  They  painted  from  nature; 
but  from  a  great  many  sketches  they  made 


THE  STUDIOS.  233 

a  composed  picture  and  gave  it  some  literary 
or  historical  meaning. 

The  old  Dutch  masters  painted  Nature  with- 
out troubling  themselves  much  about  giv- 
ing her  a  literary  meaning,  but  they  paid  no 
attention  to  light.  They  did  not  paint  "the 
moment,"  and  they  often  put  the  sunlight 
into  the  picture  in  the  studio,  after  it  was 
done.  The  personages  were  added  in  the 
same  way,  and  neither  they  nor  anything  else 
were  affected  by  the  sun.  It  was  Turner  who 
first  began  to  experiment  with  light  and  to 
paint  Nature  in  all  the  real  splendor  of  her 
light  and  color.  He  was  the  first  impression- 
ist, to  call  him  that  for  want  of  a  better  name. 

Then  in  France  came  Corot,  who  was  the 
father  of  the  French  impressionists.  He 
painted  the  "moment";  but  only  one  mo- 
ment. It  is  always  twilight  for  his  nymphs; 
"those  frail,  diaphanous  figures,  whose  trem- 
ulous white  feet  seem  not  to  touch  the 
dew-drenched  grass  they  tread  on."  He  was 
the  first  painter  to  make  everything — the 
hour,  the  personages,  the  landscape — unite  to 
give  a  single  harmonious  impression;  and  he 
was  the  precursor  of  Monet,  Sisley.  Pisarro, 
Berthe  Morissot,  who  reproduced  every  mo- 
ment, and  made  those  studies  of  the  atmos- 
phere which  have  had  such  an  influence  on  the 
evolution  of  art. 

You  might  say  that  Monet  actually  tamed 


234  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

the  sunlight.  He  caught  and  kept  it  in  a 
canvas,  by  using  the  very  processes  of  na- 
ture herself;  the  decomposition  of  light  into 
its  prismatic  colors,  and  the  shock  of  one  of 
these  against  another.  I  remember  one  in  par- 
ticular which  especially  showed  this.  Near  at 
hand  it  was  nothing  but  a  crescent  of  yellow 
paint,  left  apparently  just  as  it  had  oozed  out 
of  the  tube,  in  the  centre  of  a  mass  of  thick 
daubs  of  blue.  The  shock  of  the  two  colors, 
calculated  with  infinite  art,  made  the  picture 
from  a  distance  a  little  white  boat  with  lumi- 
nous sails,  sailing  over  a  sunlit  sea.  This  study 
of  the  atmosphere  so  new  and  so  fascinating 
entirely  took  possession  of  Monet.  His  pic- 
tures are  instantaneous  mental  photographs, 
as  it  were.  He  paints  not  the  hour,  but  the 
fraction  of  the  hour;  and  he  paints  nothing 
more  in  nature  than  that.  Meanwhile  other 
men  have  profited  by  his  investigations  and 
those  of  the  other  impressionists,  and  carried 
them  on.  One  group  in  the  Salon  of  the 
Champ  de  Mars,  nearly  all  from  thirty-five  to 
forty-five,  is  not  only  especially  remarkable, 
but  especially  characteristic  of  the  last  for- 
ward step  in  the  art  of  the  end  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  The  impressionists  broke 
with  everything  that  had  gone  before  them. 
The  "new"  landscape  painters  inherit  not 
only  from  the  ]Monets  and  Sisleys,  but  from 
the   Peruginos,   Velasquezs,  Claude  Lorrains, 


THE  STUDIOS.  235 

They  reproduce  the  "moment,"  making  every- 
thing in  the  picture  harmonize,  the  objects, 
the  personages,  the  emotion  awakened  by 
the  moment;  but  at  the  same  time  they 
keep  in  sight  the  great  masters  of  the  past,  in 
particular  the  one  who  specially  appeals  to  the 
temperament  of  each.  These  are  the  "cher- 
cheurs"  of  to-day.  as  the  others  were  of  twen- 
ty-five years  ago. 

Among  the  younger  men  take  M.  Cottet,  for 
instance,  one  of  the  most  personal  of  the 
group.  He  is  a  Savoyard,  who  was  born 
among  the  mountains  overlooking  Lake 
Geneva.  He  never  lost  his  love  for  the  rude, 
simple  life  of  his  boyhood,  but  he  has  trans- 
ported it  to  Brittany,  where  the  types  are 
more  marked,  where  the  struggle  for  exist- 
ence is  more  poignant,  and  where  every  day 
some  drama  is  played  in  wresting  a  livelihood 
from  the  eternally  savage  sea.  How  does 
he  manage  to  paint  these  primitive  fisher 
folk  so  simply,  so  naturally,  and  yet  give 
such  impressions  of  the  underlying  in- 
tensity, the  tragedy  of  their  lives?  His  special 
master  is  Puvis  de  Chavannes,  and  he  uses  the 
same  methods  as  Puvis.  Look  at  the  scene  in 
the  Life  of  St.  Genevieve,  in  the  Pantheon, 
where  St.  Remy  is  blessing  St.  Genevieve  as  a 
little  girl.  What  is  there  in  it?  It  is  only  a 
child  of  the  people,  by  whose  side  a  man  has 
stopped  as  he  rode  by  on  horseback  to  lay  a 


236  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

hand  on  her  head;  but  it  is  from  the  entire 
composition,  the  hour,  the  lines,  even  the  sim- 
plicity, of  the  landscape,  with  its  spare  clumps 
of  trees  in  the  background,  the  tall  pines  in  the 
foreground,  that  we  get  the  intense  impression 
of  solemnity,  of  something  beyond  the  ordi- 
nary in  the  whole. 

M.  Cottet  uses  the  same  method.  One  of  the 
last  things  I  saw  in  his  studio  was  a  remark- 
able canvas  he  had  just  finished  for  the  Ex- 
position of  1900,  "The  Fire  of  the  Pardon  of 
St.  John."  The  peasants  in  the  part  of  Brit- 
tany it  represented  believe  fire  sacred,  and  it 
was  from  the  ensemble,  the  mysterious  awe 
in  the  kneeling  figures  gathered  round  the 
sweeping,  flaring  flame,  the  lonely  hour,  the 
primitive  country,  the  suggestion  of  the  sea  at 
hand,  from  the  light,  the  color,  that  the  mystic 
beauty  and  power  of  the  whole  came.  For  this 
M.  Cottet  had  sketched  six  years,  noting 
everything  that  would  contribute  to  the  im- 
pression for  which  he  was  working,*  eliminat- 
ing everything  that  was  foreign  to  it,  and  com- 
bining all  finally  into  one  composed  whole. 

One  of  the  chief  pleasures  you  get  from  M. 
Cottet's  painting  is  in  his  use  of  color.  He 
is  extremely  personal  in  his  use  of  it,  with 
what  the  French  call  "les  violences  et 
les  chatouillements,"  peculiar  to  himself. 
Oddly  enough  in  the  beginning  he  was  an  ex- 
treme impressionist.     By  a  happy  chance  he 


THE  STUDIOS.  237 

met  Simon  and  Menard  in  an  exhibition  of 
pictures,  found  them  sympathetic,  attached 
himself  to  them,  and  ended  by  modifying  his 
exaggerations  of  his  palette.  He  has  a  beauti- 
ful studio  in  the  Rue  Xotre  Dame  des 
Champs,  just  over  Whistler's,  where  he  re- 
ceives on  Wednesdays.  M.  Cottet  is  a  scnsitif 
in  the  extreme,  who  hides  before  the  world  an 
underlying  vein  of  melancholy — result  of  the 
tragic  death  of  several  near  friends — by  a 
fund  of  W'it  and  drollery. 

M.  Rene  Menard,  of  whom  I  have  just 
spoken,  is  another  of  this  group  who  has 
achieved  fame  before  forty.  His  father  was  a 
famous  savant  in  the  art,  and  his  uncle  a  re- 
markable student  of  Grecian  archaeology. 
Brought  up  by  these  two,  the  boy  Menard, 
who  was  in  the  Beaux  Arts  while  he  was  yet  in 
knickerbockers,  peopled  nature  with  nymphs 
and  goddesses;  and  the  man  adapts  beautiful 
impressionist  landscapes  taken  from  the  forest 
of  Fontainebleau,  from  Southern  Brittany  or 
from  Normandy  to  Greek  scenes.  This  ex- 
quisite perfume  of  antiquity  which,  in  spite  of 
himself,  he  puts  into  everything  is  one  great 
charm  of  his  painting.  He,  also,  composes  one 
picture  from  many  sketches.  Look  at  his 
"Terre  Antique,"  just  bought  by  the  State 
for  the  Luxembourg.  Even  the  clouds  carry 
out  the  impression  of  the  lonely  grandeur  of 
the    Temple    of    Agrigentum,  on  the  antique 


238  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

soil  of  Sicily.  They  seem  like  the  gods,  depart- 
ing. M.  Menard  prepares  the  canvas  a  year 
before  painting  a  picture,  and  it  is  this  which 
gives  to  everything  by  him  its  mellowness 
and  iridescence.  He  has  the  most  interesting 
studio  I  know  of,  because  its  entire  ensemble 
is  such  an  expression  of  an  artistic  personality. 
To  begin  with,  it  shows  all  his  love  for  method 
and  for  delicate  nuances.  It  is  a  marvelous  ar- 
rangement of  objects  chosen  for  beauty  of 
color  or  form;  potteries,  tiles  from  Persia  in 
strange  tones,  antique  glasses,  tapestries,  and 
many  curious  things  he  has  picked  up  in  his 
travels  simply  for  their  tones,  such  as  chardons 
from  Palestine,  twisted  pine-roots  from  the 
gorges  of  Tarn,  pebbles  covered  with  golden 
lichens  gathered  in  the  lost  islands  of  Finis- 
terre. 

The  painter  himself,  a  tall,  fine-looking 
man,  is  goodness,  serenity  and  indulgence 
personified,  and  his  Mondays  are  rare  days 
when  interesting  people  group  together,  and 
the  host,  who  is  a  delightful  raconteur,  is  the 
soul  of  everything.  His  childhood  was  spent 
in  Barbizon,  and  he  has  a  fund  of  charming 
anecdotes  of  Corot,  Rousseau,  Dupre,  all  the 
painters  of  the  Barbizon  school,  who  were  in- 
timate friends  of  his  father.  Here  is  one 
taken  at  random :  One  day,  as  Dupre  was 
working  near  the  ''mare  au.v  fees"  in  the  for- 
est of  Fontainebleau,  a  young  man  came  up 


THE  STUDIOS.  239 

with  a  sketch  and  begged  him  to  criticize  it. 
The  master  made  a  grimace.  There  was  noth- 
ing in  it — neither  drawing,  nor  color,  nor 
promise  of  any  sort.  The  youth  Insisted 
on  a  criticism.  "Very  well,  here  it  is, 
then,"  said  Dupre,  and  with  three  or  four 
vigorous  strokes  of  the  brush  he  demolished 
the  picture  entirely.  Instead  of  appearing 
offended,  the  youth  thanked  him  warmly  and 
walked  off.  Dupre  had  reason  to  meet  him 
again,  and  he  had  profited  by  the  severe  lesson. 
It  was  Troyon. 

M.  Simon,  another  of  the  remarkable  men  of 
this  school,  is  emphatically  a  chcrchcur,  an  ex- 
perimenter. A  certain  private  fortune  has 
always  kept  him  above  the  necessity  of  con- 
sidering art  from  its  commercial  side,  and  it  is 
perhaps  to  this  that  France  owes  the  "Cirque 
Forahi"  and  the  "Portraits  dc  Mcs  Amis," 
those  two  remarkable  pictures  which  many 
amateurs  and  lovers  of  art  in  Paris  have  said 
were  in  themselves  sufificient  to  found  a 
school.  The  group  of  portraits,  which,  hap- 
pily for  America,  has  been  bought  by  Pitts- 
burg for  the  Carnegie  Institute  (the  portraits 
are  of  Menard,  Cottet,  Dauchez,  and  Edmond 
and  Andre  Saglio)  is  the  sort  of  painting  which 
Diderot  loved.  It  has  the  qualities  of  the 
greatest  painting  in  color,  composition,  tem- 
perament and  light.  M.  Simon's  favorite  mas- 
ters   are    Velasquez    and    Frans    Hals.     He 


240  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

prepares  the  sketches  for  his  Brittany 
pictures  during  tlie  ihree  months  he  spends 
in  Benodet  in  the  summer,  and  executes 
the  personages  as  far  as  possible  in 
superb  aquarelles.  Then  in  his  studio  in 
Paris  he  paints  the  whole  picture  at  a  single 
stretch,  putting  into  it  an  energy  and  force 
which  leaves  him  completely  exhausted  when 
it  is  finished. 

He  is  slight,  delicately  built,  reserved  with 
strangers,  excellent  and  pleasant  with  those 
he  knows,  and  a  man  of  the  most  ex- 
treme sensibility.  I  heard  him  confess  one 
morning  to  not  having  slept  at  all  that  night 
because  he  had  read  the  evening  before  that 
the  drought  was  going  to  ruin  the  peasants  of 
several  provinces.  He  has  the  extreme  versa- 
tility of  the  cultivated  Frenchman,  and  his 
first  successes  were  in  literature,  in  brilliant 
short  stories  which  he  published  in  Gil  Bias. 
In  his  conversation  he  has  a  rare  facility 
for  finding  the  exact  expression;  for  launch- 
ing those  "mots  qui  enlevent  le  morceau,"  as 
the  French  say.  It  was  the  taste  of  his  young 
wife  for  painting  which  decided  him,  fortun- 
ately, to  devote  himself  to  art.  She  is  an  as- 
socie  of  the  Champs  de  Mars,  and  does  tinted 
drawings,  very  clever,  full  of  charm,  of  an  en- 
tirely different  style  from  her  husband.  They 
live  on  the  Boulevard  Montparnasse,    in    an 


THE  STUDIOS.  241 

apartment  with  a  studio  arranged  with  exquis- 
ite taste. 

Mme.  Simon's  brother,  Andre  Dauchez, 
who  lives  in  the  same  house,  and  is  a  brilliant 
young  painter  of  this  same  school,  also  does 
Brittany  scenes.  I  know  of  no  one  who  has 
ever  given  to  a  more  remarkable  degree  the 
impression  of  great  stretches  of  country  on 
which  men  and  women  are  toiling.  I  studied 
lately  in  Dauchez's  studio  a  series  of  eight  or 
ten  sketches  for  one  picture.  It  was  interesting 
and  suggestive  to  see  the  fashion  in  which  he 
worked  to  get  the  dominant  note  of  his  impres- 
sion. In  each  sketch  the  figures,  carefully 
drawn  in  the  beginning,  were  a  little  more 
subordinated  until  they  simply  blended  into 
the  whole. 

MM.  Cazin  and  Besnard  are  the  older  and 
famous  masters  of  this  school,  whom  I  speak  of 
after  the  others  because,  while  they  are  among 
the  great  painters  of  this  century,  they  no 
longer  surprise, like  the  new  men  who  are  car- 
rying on  the  evolution  of  art.  Cazin  reminds 
you  of  one  of  those  old  Calvinist  patriarchs 
who  fled  from  the  West  to  the  North  in  the 
time  of  Louis  XIV.  to  escape  persecution.  He 
is  a  thick-set,  broad-shouldered  man,  with  a 
long  gray  beard  and  long  gray  hair  carefully 
arranged.  He  always  wears  a  large  gray  cape 
and  a  high  hat  with  a  flat  brim,  and  carries  a 
long  walking-stick  studded  with  little  symmet- 


242  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

rical  incrustations,  with  an  ivory  handle,  which 
is  nothing  more  or  less  than  an  old  annc,  a 
tailor's  measure  of  the  olden  time,  and  this 
patriarchal  appearance  is  further  carried  out 
by  the  old-fashioned  courtesy  of  his  manner. 

M.  Cazin  has  moved  from  the  West  to 
the  North,  from  Anjou  to  Picardy,  but 
it  was  in  no  way  to  flee  persecution. 
On  the  contrary,  few  men  have  had  the 
satisfaction  during  their  lifetimes  of  seeing 
themselves,  like  him,  considered  as  a  great 
chief  of  modern  landscape  painting,  and  oi 
having  their  pictures  bring  the  prices  of  the 
great  masters  of  other  times.  Up  to  the 
age  of  forty  or  forty-two  he  lived  at 
Angers  entirely  unknown.  Each  year  he 
sent  to  the  Salon  his  beautiful  and  poetic 
canvases.  Each  year  they  were  a  lit- 
tle higher  skied.  One  day,  however,  two  men 
noticed  one  of  them.  They  were  the  sculptor 
Alfred  Lenoir,  and  a  friend  of  his,  an  architect. 
They  wrote  to  Cazin  to  ask  the  price — 500 
francs.  The  two  agreed  to  buy  the  picture 
in  partnership  and  share  its  possession  as  well 
as  the  expense.  Although  it  is  worth  now 
twenty  thousand  francs,  they  still  own  it  in 
common,  and  every  six  months  it  passes  from 
one  to  the  other. 

Cazin  has  now  bought  up  immense  tracts 
of  land  in  the  Picardy,  from  which  he  got  his 
finest  inspirations,  so  that  they  may  stay  uncul- 


Bonnat's    Stiulio. 


iicsnard    in    His    Studio. 


THE  STUDIOS.  243 

tivated,  and  covered  with  those  dehcate  trees 
and  shrubs,  those  clumps  of  furze  and  gorse 
which  we  know  so  well.  All  over  them  he  has 
stationed  keepers,  not  to  protect  his  game  pre- 
serves, but  his  art  preserves.  He  does  not 
want  the  solitudes  he  loves  peopled. 

You  could  not  find  a  personality  more  the 
opposite  of  M.  Cazin  than  M.  Besnard.  Bes- 
nard  is  an  enormous  man,  who  is  always 
dressed  by  a  London  tailor,  who  wears  nothing 
but  English  cravats,  and  would  pass  for  an 
Englishman  if  it  were  not  for  the  eye  of  the 
Latin.  For  that  matter,  he  lived  many 
years  in  London,  where  a  certain  side 
of  English  life  appealed  to  him — the 
taste  for  sport  and  for  out-door  exercise.  It 
was  in  London  that  he  met  his  wife,  a  French- 
woman also  living  there,  a  sculptor  of  much 
talent.  Something  that  he  brought  away  with 
him  from  England  was  an  irrestistibly  funny 
manner  of  imitating  the  Englishman  trying 
to  talk  French.  Pie  has  often  found  it  a 
fruitful  source  of  amusement  in  traveling  in 
France,  where  he  has  sometimes  succeeded 
in  mystifying  a  whole  table  d'hote.  He  is  one 
of  the  men  in  Paris  who  has  the  most  esprit. 

I  once  asked  M.  Besnard  how  he  came  to 
make  his  researches  into  light.  He  said  it  was 
the  result  of  living  in  England.  He  was  a  "Prix 
de  Rome"  and  he  went  to  England  to  refresh 
himself  with  more  modern  paintings  than  that 


244  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

of  Italy — the  Turners  and  Sir  Joshuas,  for  in- 
stance. The  brilliancy  of  London  life  in 
the  season  led  him  to  devote  himself  more  and 
more  to  the  study  of  color  and  light.  When 
we  think  of  it,  nowhere  but  in  London  do  we 
see  so  much  color  out  of  doors,  in  a  setting  of 
green. 

Besnard  lives  in  a  picturesque  private  hotel 
in  the  Rue  Guillaume  Tell.  He  receives  in  his 
vast  atelier,  filled  with  canvases,  sketches, 
curious  souvenirs  of  his  travels,  the  statues 
and  studies  of  Madame  Besnard  swathed  in 
linen.  The  other  rooms  of  the  house  are 
curious  and  personal.  He  never  hesitates  to 
use  anything  as  a  decoration,  no  matter  how 
eccentric,  provided  it  gives  him  the  joys  of 
form  and  color.  The  fire-place  of  his  salon 
has  for  fender  great  serpents  of  enameled 
pottery,  interlaced;  and  he  uses  as  centre- 
piece for  his  dining  table  the  charming  torso 
of  an  antique  Venus,  kneeling,  without  head 
and  without  arms,  which  delights  the  eyes  of 
his  convives.  He  has  a  delightful  country  place 
on  the  lake  of  Annecy.  I  do  not  always  enjoy 
some  of  Besnard's  eccentricities  in  painting, 
and  anyone  who  is  an  experimenter  must 
sometimes  end  in  eccentricity.  But  his  best 
things,  such  as  his  Salon  exhibit  of  last  year, 
his  decorative  panels  and  the  "Flamenco,"  are 
some  of  the  most  beautiful  things  of  the  art  of 
the  nineteenth  century;  they  reveal  such  imag- 


THE  STUDIOS.  24S 

ination,  such  science  of  the  harmonies  of  form, 
such  exquisite  and  personal  harmonics  of  color. 
Besnard  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  instan- 
taneous draughtsmen  I  know  of.  The  great 
passion  of  this  colorist,  who  once  said  to  me: 
"I  always  exasperate  one  side  of  nature,"  is 
Ingres.  He  is  a  fervent  disciple  of  Emerson, 
and  quotes  Emerson's  saying:  "Whoso 
would  be  a  man  must  be  non-conform- 
ist." Of  living  painters  he  has  been  more  in- 
fluenced by  Degas  than  anyone  else,  who  was 
also  the  master  of  Forain. 

Speaking  of  Degas,  one  of  the  best  impres- 
sionists who  ever  painted  the  figure,  it  is  rare 
that  anyone  sees  him  nowadays.  He  seldom 
admits  a  visitor  to  his  studio.  He  is  sus- 
picious both  of  painters  and  visitors  who  are 
not  painters.  He  looks  down  on  the  Salon 
and  never  exposes  there,  and  you  can  hardly 
see  his  work  elsewhere  in  Paris  than  at  Du- 
rand-Ruel's  or  in  the  Luxembourg,  which  in- 
herited a  few  of  his  pictures  three  years  ago, 
among  others  a  dance  at  the  Opera.  In  spite 
of  his  age  Degas  still  looks  young  and  he  is 
an  admirable  and  witty  conversationalist.  It 
was  he  who  defined  Gustave  Moreau  at  the 
time  of  his  election  to  the  Academy  as  "A 
monsieur  who  paints  the  gods  with  watch 
chains." 

One  of  the  most  beautiful  houses,  a  charm- 
ing  hotel    in    the    Rue  de  Bassano,  almost  at 


246    -  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

the  corner  of  the  Champs  Elysees,  belongs  to 
M.  Bonnat.  An  imposing  staircase  leads  to  the 
studio  on  the  third  floor.  On  the  last  landing 
is  a  fine  Puvis  de  Chavannes,  "Doux 
Pays,"  and  the  studio  itself,  which  you  reach 
through  two  little  salons,  is  always  filled  with 
finished  and  unfinished  portraits  of  celebrities 
of  all  sorts  and  millionaires.  The  master,  a 
short,  robust  man,  with  moustache  and  a 
pointed  beard,  receives  with  great  courtesy, 
but  without  vain  words.  He  does  not  insist 
upon  your  admiring  his  own  pictures,  but  he 
delights  in  showing  his  collection  of  other 
masters;  a  group  by  Ingres,  a  sketch  in  san- 
guine by  Raphael,  a  sepia  by  Michael  Angelo, 
two  Botticellis,  a  Delacroix,  a  Prud'hon.  The 
entire  hotel  is  hung  with  chef-d'oeuvres. 

M.  Bonnat  is  a  bachelor.  His  old  mother,  to 
whom  he  was  tenderly  devoted,  always  lived 
with  him  until  a  few  years  ago.  He  has  the 
reputation  of  being  a  charming  man.  One  of 
his  glories  is  to  have  received  in  his  shirt 
sleeves  one  summer  day  the  Tzar  Alex- 
ander HI. 

One  of  the  simplest  and  the  most  beloved 
of  the  Paris  painters  is  the  president  of  the 
Salon  of  the  Champs  Elysees,  Jean  Paul 
Laurens.  He  has  always  been  a  histor- 
ical painter,  and  his  best  work  is  "The 
Death  of  St.  Genevieve,"  in  the  Pan- 
theon.      He    is    a    very  interesting  example 


THE  STUDIOS.  247 

of  a  self-made  man.  A  peasant's  son,  when  he 
was  fifteen  lie  joined  a  strolling  theatre  troupe 
as  a  painter  of  scenery,  and  in  this  way  trav- 
eled all  over  France.  At  Toulouse  the  direc- 
tor of  the  ficole  des  Beaux  Arts  noticed  him 
and  offered  him  work.  Later  he  married  the 
director's  daughter.  His  reputation  came 
to  him  in  1878,  and  by  a  simple  chance. 
A  deputy  named  Turquet  wanted  to 
make  a  reputation  in  the  Chambre  as 
a  protector  of  art,  and  Laurens's  picture, 
"The  General  StafT  of  Austria  Marching  Be- 
fore the  Body  of  Marceau,"  had  just  been 
noticed  at  the  Exposition;  Turquet  bought  it 
for  40,000  francs,  and  made  a  successful  hit. 
Not  long  after  he  was  appointed  Secretary  of 
the  Beaux  Arts. 

Laurens  is  a  tall,  thin,  roughly-hewn  man, 
with  clear  and  gentle  eyes,  which  give  him  an 
expression  of  honesty  and  goodness.  He  is 
not  an  easy  talker;  he  often  has  trouble  in 
finding  words,  but  when  he  has  found 
them  they  are  frequently  eloquent  in  their 
simplicity.  I  remember  one  thing  that 
was  told  me  of  him  which  is  character- 
istic of  the  absolute  honesty  of  the  man:  He 
was  walking  through  the  Salon  with  Bour- 
geois, the  Minister,  who  had  stopped  before 
one  of  the  painter's  Napoleons,  and  was  over- 
whelming him  with  fulsome  compliments,  to 
his  great  discomfiture.     "Why,  Monsieur  le 


248  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

Ministre,"  said  Laurens,  at  last,  "the  day  that 
I  am  perfectly  satisfied  with  a  picture  I  shall 
stop.    I  shall  never  touch  a  brush  again." 

How  many  pages  it  would  be  easy  to  fill 
with  notes  about  the  personalities  of  these 
masters  of  the  present,  who  will  so  many  of 
them  soon  be  the  masters  of  the  past,  but 
I  can  only  add  a  few  more  about  one  who  is 
one  of  the  geniuses,  Rodin.  To  know 
something  of  Rodin  you  must  not  see 
him  in  society,  where  he  rarely  talks,  nor 
yet  on  his  reception  days,  where  he  is  a  little 
ill  at  ease  in  his  frock  coat.  You  must  have 
occasion  to  surprise  him  in  the  morning,  as, I 
have  once  or  twice,  at  work  among  his  patri- 
cians; rushing  in  an  old  blue  robe  de  chambre 
from  the  studio  where  he  is  finishing  the 
monument  to  Victor  Hugo  to  the  other 
where  for  twenty  years  he  has  been  adding 
complicated  figures  to  his  Dante  gates. 

Then  he  will  talk,  and  he  may  show  you 
his  collection  of  unfinished  sketches  and 
projects  which  more  than  anything  else  will 
give  you  an  exact  idea  of  his  genius  and  its 
limitations.  Some  of  these  are  pure  marvels, 
like  everything  which  Rodin  has  interpreted 
with  his  profound  sensibility  when  it  is  some- 
thing that  he  has  seen.  Others,  pure  works 
of  the  imagination,  are  puerile  and  even  ab- 
surd. You  could  not  imagine  anything  more 
incongruous  by  the  side  of  projects  glowing 


THE  STUDIOS.  249 

with  genius  than  some  of  his  sketches;  water 
nymphs,  childishly  drawn,  crossing  their 
limbs  at  right  angles,  for  instance,  or  some  of 
the  plans  for  the  gigantic  monument  to 
"Work;"  an  immense  staircase  mounting 
in  a  spiral  to  the  figure  of  an  angel, 
with  statues  all  the  length  of  the  stair- 
case, and  still  other  statues  in  the  pedestal  to 
symbolize  subterranean  toil.  Rodin  cannot 
make  a  work  of  pure  imagination.  Anything 
he  has  ever  seen  he  transfigures.  It  was 
because  of  this  lack  of  imagination  that  he 
succeeded  in  making  only  a  vague  sketch  of 
Balzac.  His  only  idea  of  him  he  got  through 
conversations  with  his  literary  friends,  each  of 
whom  gave  him  some  trait  of  the  great  novel- 
ist. The  result  was  a  piece  of  sculpture  of  im- 
mense suggestiveness,  but  which  was  never 
anything  but  an  unfinished  sketch. 


The  Louvre, 

There  is  never  a  season,  scarcely  a  month, 
if  you  Hve  in  Paris,  when  some  friend,  or  friend 
of  a  friend,  passing  through,  will  not  come  to 
you  and  say:  "I  do  not  want  to  go  to  the 
Louvre  without  you.  You  have  lived  here  so 
many  years,  and  are  such  a  lover  of  beautiful 
things." 

For  a  long  time  I  never  resisted  these 
seductive  words,  partly,  I  confess  frankly,  be- 
cause they  flattered  my  vanity;  partly  out  of 
a  feeling  of  sympathy  for  anyone  starting 
out  to  make  acquaintance  with  this  immense 
palace,  crammed  from  top  to  bottom  with 
treasures.  I  hardly  know  of  a  more  appal- 
ling experience  than  first  expeditions  to  a  pic- 
ture gallery.  The  chef-d'ceuvres  stare  at  you 
with  their  strangely  familiar  and  yet  unre- 
sponsive faces;  the  endless  succession  of 
changing  forms  and  colors  bewilders  your 
brain;  at  last  even  your  memory  forsakes  you 
under  the  effort  of  leaping  from  period  to  pe- 
riod of  the  world's  history  without  intermis- 
sion. Often,  if  people  were  quite  frank,  I 
am  afraid  they  would  confess,  like  me,  to  hav- 
ing been  reduced  at  the  end  of  their  early 
350 


THE   LOUVRE.  251 

visits  to  a  point  where  their  only  idea  was 
that  of  trying  to  keep  their  equiUbrium  on  the 
highly-poHshed  floors.  The  professional 
guides  at  so  much  an  hour  are  no  resource. 
They  assume  not  only  the  duty  of  making 
you  see  everything,  but  feel  responsible  for 
your  emotions  before  each  picture.  So  for 
a  long  time  I  went  to  the  Louvre  with  anyone 
who  asked  me. 

As  this  experience  becomes  greater,  how- 
ever, I  find  that  I  become  less  and  less  ac- 
cessible to  flattery  or  to  pity.  Very  few  peo- 
ple, I  discover,  really  care  much  for  any- 
thing you  may  have  to  say  about  the  pictures, 
unless  it  be  to  compare  this  with  their  Baede- 
kers', and  this  generally  causes  me  to  be  taken 
in  flagrant  delit  of  ignorance.  One  class  of 
tourists  is  interested  only,  in  "doing"  the  gal- 
lery; on  the  principle  of  a  family  I  once  met, 
whose  pride  it  was  to  have  "done"  all  Paris 
in  three  days.  "My  wife  took  the  galleries, 
my  daughter  the  churches  and  I  the  cafes," 
the  husband  said  when  he  was  asked  how  they 
had  accomplished  the  feat. 

Others  are  animated  by  the  sole  ambition  of 
testing  their  archaeological  knowledge  of  the 
pictures.  They  are  strong  on  the  "new 
art  criticism"  and  want  to  pick  out  the 
Raphaels  that  are  Signorellis,  and  the  Botti- 
cellis  that  are  Guilio  Romanos.  Others  want 
to    tell    the     stories    about     the    lost     hand 


252  PARIS  AS  IT  IS. 

attributed  to  the  Venus  of  Milo,  and  about 
the  window  from  which,  according  to 
the  legend,  Charles  IX.  shot  upon  the 
Huguenots  at  the  massacre  of  St.  Barthole- 
mew.  In  short,  they  invariably  care  for  an 
infinity  of  things  which  do  not  interest  me 
in  the  least  and,  on  their  side,  are  not  inter- 
ested in  the  least  in  any  of  the  things  which 
I  love.  So  I  have  ended  by  going  alone  to  the 
gallery,  except  when  I  find  those  whom 
I  know  to  be  very  near  to  me  through  a  great 
sympathy  of  mind  and  heart,  and  then 
I  show  them  my  Louvre.  It  is  only  this 
sort  of  a  visit  that  I  propose  making 
here.  For  the  discussion  of  the  books  alone 
which  have  been  written  upon  this  great  col- 
lection would  take  more  than  one  human  life- 
time. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  nothing  in  this 
vast  palace  transformed  into  a  museum  which 
leaves  me  indififerent  when  I  stop  before  it. 
Everything  in  it  is  of  interest,  either  from  the 
perfection  of  its  execution  or  the  revelation  it 
makes  of  past  civilizations.  But  if,  Hke  me, 
you  are  a  fervent  visitor  of  museums,  you  end 
by  making  particularly  intimate  friends  in 
them,  which  you  go  to  see  each  time  that  you 
pass  that  way  and  have  a  moment  to  spare. 
They  are  friends  which  come  to  be  like  the 
best  of  those  in  reality,  for  you  can  always 
be  sure  that  they  will  lift  you  above  the  petti- 


General    \'ie\v   of  the    Louvre   from   the   River. 


Ljallcry  of  Apollo  at   the   Louvre. 


THE   LOUVRE.  253 

nesses  of  the  everyday  world,  and  that  you 
will  leave  them  cheered  and  stimulated. 

None  of  the  pictures  with  which  I  have  this 
particular  sort  of  intimacy  are  among  those 
which  stand  at  the  very  summit  among  the 
creations  of  men,  and  which  we  look  at 
with  wonder — mingled  with  a  slight  de- 
gree of  fear.  In  the  Salon  Carre,  when  I 
have  only  a  little  time,  I  pass  before  the 
"Mona  Lisa"  of  Leonardo  and  the  "Entomb- 
ment of  Christ"  by  Titian  with  a  respect  that 
is  religious,  but  rapid,  and  go  straight  to  a 
corner  by  the  side  of  the  door  of  the  long  gal- 
lery, where  is  that  portrait  of  the  young  Eliza- 
beth of  Austria,  Queen  of  France,  painted  by 
Clouet  in  1570,  not  long  after  her  marriage, 
when  she  was  sixteen  years  old.  In  her 
straight  robe  of  satin  and  brocade,  encrusted 
with  jewels  so  minutely  painted  you  would  say 
they  were  real,  her  hair  artistically  rolled  away 
from  her  temples  and  entwined  with  pearls, 
her  glance  seems  to  have  an  expression  of 
melancholy  and  uneasiness  as  though  she 
was  turning  over  in  her  mind  some  little  sor- 
row hidden  in  the  bottom  of  her  soul.  The 
value  of  the  work,  no  doubt,  lies  more  in 
the  perfect  sincerity  of  the  drawing  than  in 
the  painting.  This  is  thin  and  hard  as  people 
liked  it  in  that  day.  The  model,  too,  is  far 
from  being  what  might  be  called  a  beauty, 
with  her  nose  a  little  too  large,  and  her  eyes 


254  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

elongated  like  almonds.  But,  nevertheless, 
she  pleases  me,  my  princess!  She  holds  me 
with  the  charm  of  her  womanhood  and 
the  grace  of  the  young  wife  who  seems  to  for- 
get, alone  before  the  artist,  the  rank  indicated 
by  her  resplendent  dress.  Possibly  she  is 
thinking  of  some  one  of  those  little  tristesses 
which  are  the  lot  of  childish  wives;  sorhe 
caress,  perhaps,  misunderstood  by  the  master 
— a  frown  upon  his  brow — perhaps  it  is  the 
memory  of  her  mother  and  the  home  she  has 
just  left  forever  .  .  .  Who  knows?  But 
this  picture  always  means  to  me  an  ideal  of 
youth;  and  I  never  stand  before  it  without 
a  little  clutching  at  the  heart  such  as  you 
have  when,  in  turning  over  a  bundle  of  old 
letters,  you  come  upon  the  yellowed  photo- 
graph of  a  friend  who  died  young,  and  much 
loved. 

I  have,  so  to  speak,  an  equal  intimacy  with 
the  young  boy  by  Prud'hon  which  is  in  the 
gallery  of  modern  paintings  on  the  right  as 
you  leave  the  long  gallery.  It  would  be  hard, 
however,  to  imagine  a  picture  more  different 
from  the  Clouet.  It  is  broadly  painted,  and 
the  personage  is  evidently  a  plebeian,  sim- 
ply clad  in  a  brown  redingote  with  black  collet, 
such  as  was  worn  at  the  end  of  the  Revolu- 
tion. As  a  matter  of  fact,  two  centuries  and  a 
half  separate  these  two  pictures,  and  nothing 
could  be  in  greater  contrast  than  the  two 


THE   LOUVRE.  255 

epochs  in  which  this  queen  and  this  Httle 
bourgeois  came  into  the  world,  and  yet  my 
imagination  always  associates  them  together. 
They  must  have  been  about  the  same 
age,  sixteen;  but  while  the  first  charms  me  by 
the  simplicity  and  candor  which  she  has  kept 
in  her  royal  splendor,  the  other  delights  me  by 
his  grand  air  of  haughtiness  and  distinction. 
His  head,  with  features  as  delicate  as  those  of 
a  young  girl,  is  slightly  thrown  back;  the 
glance  with  which  he  dominates  the  crowd  is 
full  of  confidence  in  life  and  pride  in  his  birth- 
right of  manhood.  It  is  that  of  one  of  those 
young  lion-cubs  of  the  time  between  the  fall  of 
the  Kingdom  and  the  rise  of  the  Empire,  when 
orators  of  twenty  moved  people  with  their 
eloquence,  and  generals  of  twenty-five  began 
to  conquer  Europe. 

Two  other  paintings  are  among  the  things 
in  the  Louvre  which  are  my  special  friends. 
They  also  are  of  widely  different  characters, 
speaking  of  widely  dififerent  times.  One  is  a 
little  landscape  by  Watteau,  in  the  Salle  la 
Caze,  much  less  celebrated  than  most  of 
the  Watteaus.  It  represents  a  setting  sun 
whose  orange  rays  flame  behind  the  tall  trees 
of  a  park,  and  are  reflected  in  the  mirror  of  a 
great  marble  basin.  Seated  on  the  grass  and 
talking  gallantly  is  a  company  of  young  peo- 
ple richly  dressed.  The  falling  twilight  softens 
the  masses,  and  renders  the  silhouettes  unde- 


256  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

cided.  Few  things  set  me  more  to  dreaming 
than  the  contrast  between  this  brilliant  and 
wanton  httle  company — the  fete  galante — and 
the  strange  beauty  and  melancholy  of  the  land- 
scape— the  passing  day — now  "with  yester- 
day's seven  thousand  years." 

The  other  picture,  in  the  gallery  of  the 
ItaHan  primitives,  is  the  "Crowning  of  the 
Virgin,"  by  Fra  Angelico.  It  represents  the 
Virgin  crowned  by  Christ  in  Paradise  in  the 
midst  of  an  assemblage  of  saints  where  the 
men  are  on  the  left  and  the  women  on  the 
right.  It  is  the  first  figures  in  this  last  group 
which  seem  to  me  so  specially  enchanting, 
so  specially  worthy  of  the  subject.  This  is 
not  only  because  of  the  infinite  grace  of  these 
women  in  adoration,  because  of  the  radiance 
of  happiness  in  their  ecstatic  faces,  but  also 
because  of  the  exquisite  purity  and  delicacy  of 
the  tones  in  which  they  are  painted.  This 
is  one  of  the  finest  examples  I  know  of  of 
what  an  artist  can  produce  under  the  empire 
of  an  unquestioning  religious  faith.  It  is  hard 
for  the  most  spiritual  of  the  painters  of  to-day 
to  raise  themselves  above  a  purely  human 
ideal.  But  all  those  sublime  abstractions 
— Divine  justice,  eternal  felicity,  Paradise — 
forever  evoke  for  me  the  vision  of  these  saints 
which  the  good  brother  of  Fiesole,  surnamed 
Angelico,  painted  in  the  peace  of  his  cell;  and 


THE    LOU] -RE.  257 

which  the  hazard  of  events  has  set  down  in 
the  midst  of  all  the  movement  of  Paris. 

In  the  gallery  of  Renaissance  sculpture  at 
the  end  of  the  court  T  fancy  no  one  will  have 
any  difficulty  in  understanding  why  I  have 
come  to  have  a  real  tenderness  for  the  little 
girl  in  terra-cotta  modeled  by  Houdon  at  the 
end  of  the  last  century.  She  is  just  of  that 
charming  age,  seven  or  eight,  when  the  fea- 
tures begin  to  be  clearly  defined  in  the 
rounded  baby  face.  There  is  already  a  fore- 
shadowing of  the  woman  in  the  life-like  head, 
turned  with  so  quick  and  supple  a  move- 
ment that  it  has  creased  dimples  in  the  neck 
and  the  narrow  shoulders.  A  name  is  in- 
scribed upon  the  pedestal,  an  unknown  name, 
Jeanne  Brougniart.  So  she  really  lived,  this 
charming  little  creature!  She  probably  grew 
up,  was  married,  and  it  is  possible  that  her 
great-grandchildren  live  still.  Age  must  have 
changed  her;  she  must  have  had  the  or- 
dinary sum  of  human  suffering  and  hu- 
man joy.  All  that  is  unknown,  lost  among 
all  the  histories  of  human  existences  suc- 
ceeding each  other  so  incessantly.  But  nev- 
ertheless we  know,  and  those  after  us  will 
know  for  endless  years  to  come,  thanks 
to  the  passing  fancy  of  an  artist  of  genius,  that 
in  the  beginning  of  this  century  there  lived  a 
little  girl  who  was  called  Jeanne  Brougniart, 


258  PARIS   AS  IT  IS. 

and  who  was  charming  when  she  was  seven 
years  old. 

For  very  much  the  same  reasons  I  am 
fond  of  a  little  personage  who  lived  three 
or  four  thousand  years  ago,  whom  you 
will  find,  high  as  the  half  of  my  arm,  on  an 
isolated  pedestal  in  one  of  the  Egyptian  rooms 
of  the  first  floor.  The  unknown  sculptor  who 
fashioned  in  precious  wood  the  perfect  ele- 
gance of  her  form  has  graven  at  the  bottom 
her  name  and  her  quality.  She  was  called 
Toui,  and  she  was  a  priestess.  I  know  of  her 
nothing  except  that  in  her  youth  her  face  was 
lovely  and  she  knew  it;  for  she  took  great 
care  to  frame  it  in  an  artistic  arrangement  of 
curls.  But  this  is  enough  to  bring  her  very 
near  to  me,  this,  and  the  thought  that  I  see 
her  there  just  as  she  walked  formerly  through 
the  streets  of  Memphis  or  of  Thebes,  display- 
ing the  grace  of  her  figure  in  her  supple  robe, 
and  delighting  in  the  admiration  of  men.  Since 
I  have  made  her  acquaintance  ancient  Egypt 
is  to  me  no  more  a  dead  thing  symbolized  by 
a  grinning  and  time-worn  Sphynx,  or  by 
great  stone  Pyramids,  filled  with  mummies. 
In  an  instant  the  scenes  figured  on  these  monu- 
ments rise  before  me  with  all  the  animation  of 
life,  and  it  seems  to  me  as  though  the  delicate 
jewels  ranged  in  the  vitrines  near  by  had  just 
left  the  faces  and  the  hands  they  once  decked. 
For  this  resurrection  it  has  only  been  neces- 


THE    LOUVRE.  259 

sary  for  an  artist  to  reveal  to  me  that  woman 
had  the  same  charms  and  the  same  amiable 
perversities  in  that  distant  civilization  which 
she  has  to-day. 

Here  my  enumeration  of  the  things  I  go  to 
see  most  often  in  the  Louvre  ends.  With  num- 
berless others  I  have  a  friendly  acquaintance, 
but,  as  is  so  often  the  case  in  the  world  out- 
side, if  I  am  frank  with  myself,  I  must  confess 
that  it  is  an  acquaintance  which  speaks  more  to 
the  intellect  than  to  the  heart.  Of  such,  for 
instance,  is  the  little  Gourzagne  in  bronze,  by 
Sperandio,  in  one  of  the  rooms  in  the  de- 
partment of  the  Renaissance.  Solidly  planted 
on  his  great  war-horse,  he  evokes  in  my  im- 
agination all  the  amorous,  traitorous  and  war- 
like Italy  of  the  Machiavelli,  the  Cellini,  and 
the  Medicis.  Of  such,  too,  is  a  miniature,  an 
evangel  of  the  fifteenth  century  by  Fouquet, 
where,  in  a  delicious  landscape,  you  see  Saint 
Marguerite  spinning  among  her  sheep,  while 
the  Roman  Governor  Olibius  stops  his  horse 
to  contemplate  her.  Of  these,  too,  is  the 
driver  of  a  Greek  chariot,  found  in  the  exca- 
vations of  Delphi,  made  long  before  the  time 
of  Phidias,  and  yet  showing  to  a  greater  de- 
gree than  has  ever  been  attained  by  any 
other  artist  the  qualities  of  the  finest  sculp- 
ture, delicacy  in  line  and  majesty  in  simplicity. 

I  do  not  speak  of  the  Rembrandts,  the 
Rubens,  the  Van  Dycks,  the  Velasquezes,  the 


26o  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

Claude  Lorrains,  the  \'enus  of  Milo,  the  Vic- 
tory of  Samothrace,  of  any  of  the  things 
which  are  the  glory  of  the  Louvre  and  which 
are  known  by  all  the  world;  and  I  do  not  pre- 
tend that  others  who  go  to  see  these  that  I 
have  made  my  special  friends  will  take  the 
same  pleasure  in  them  that  I  do,  or  for  the 
same  reasons.  If  they  are  quite  sincere  with 
themselves  their  sympathies  will  probably  go 
elsewhere.  For  in  order  that  a  work  of  art 
may  move  us  deeply,  not  only  must  the 
choice  of  the  model  or  of  the  subject  corre- 
spond to  some  secret  inclination  of  ours,  but 
also,  by  a  mysterious  rapport  of  sensibility,  we 
must  be  capable  of  being  moved  before  it  by 
some  of  the  feeling  the  artist  had  at  the  mo- 
ment he  got  his  inspiration.  I  have  only  tried 
to  show  why  certain  things  a  little  overshad- 
owed by  the  celebrities  appeal  to  me  and  to 
give  a  method  for  walking  among  the  galleries 
which  will  always  be  a  source  of  the  most  re- 
fined and  delicate  enjoyment  of  art. 


The  Arc  de  Trioinphe 


Bridge  of  Notre   Dame. 


Notre  Dame. 

I  wonder  if  you  have  ever,  like  me,  happened 
to  know  an  old  lady  who  had  lived  through  a 
whole  century  without  apparently  having  her 
vigor  either  of  mind  or  body  impaired  by  any 
of  those  shocks  which  come  every  now  and 
then  as  premonitions  of  the  long  repose  at  the 
end.  One  I  knew  formerly  lived  in  the  mem- 
ory of  her  first  fifty  years.  After  those  she 
gave  up  following  the  incessant  evolution 
of  manners  and  ideas;  she  kept  almost  entirely 
to  her  own  room,  surrounded  by  her  familiar 
bibelots  and  her  faded  furniture;  and  she  pre- 
served the  fashion  in  dress  of  the  time  when 
she  bade  the  world  farewell.  Her  great-grand- 
children, already  men,  seemed  to  her  almost 
strangers;  they  had  ideas  and  a  manner  of 
looking  at  life  which  she  could  not  under- 
stand; and  they  no  longer  recalled  to  her  in 
any  way  those  whom  she  had  loved,  long 
dead,  to  whom  she  had  given  her  first  as  well 
as  her  last  tenderness. 

The  sensation  of  deep  melancholy  which  I 

always  had  before  this  ancient  dame,  clinging 

to  her  past  like  a  dry  bough  to  the  bank  of  a 

swift-flowing  stream,  I  feel  every  time  that  I 

261 


262  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

stop  before  the  old  church  of  Xotre  Dame. 
Buttressed  on  that  isle  of  the  city  against 
which  breaks  the  current  of  the  Seine,  in  the 
superb  charm  of  her  Gothic  dress,  she  has  re- 
mained for  a  thousand  years  an  unequaled 
chef-d'oeuvre  of  art.  But  it  is  long  since 
either  the  admiration  or  the  respect  of  those 
who  pass  by  has  been  worthy  of  her.  Less 
and  less  does  the  world  appreciate  the  mys- 
tic beauty  of  this  flower  of  stone,  whose  tow- 
ers outlined  against  the  heavens  in  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  signified  to  the  poor  people  below 
the  sublime  consolations  of  Christianity — of 
Faith.  Hope  and  Charity. 

Now,  we  see  her  only  with  our  eyes;  they, 
the  men  and  women  of  other  days,  saw  her 
with  their  souls! 

Barbarous  civilization  has  made  of  her  only 
a  bibelot  in  an  etagere.  It  has  circled  her  with 
an  iron  railing.  On  one  side  it  has  moved 
away  her  old  houses  the  width  of  a  street;  on 
the  other  it  has  destroyed  them.  Before  her 
triple  portal  it  has  put  the  desert  of  a  great 
open  place.  It  has  done  all  this  in  the  name 
of  hygiene,  in  the  name  of  symmetry,  in  the 
name  of  security  against  fire,  in  the  name  of 
an  infinity  of  things  which  may  make  for  the 
progress  of  civilization,  but  have  nothing 
to  do  with  respect  for  the  beauty  of  an- 
cient monuments.  Now,  the  great  fiying 
buttresses  of  stone  bending    in    double  rank 


NOTRE   DAME.  263 

from  the  tapering  roof  of  the  choir  to  the  edge 
of  the  aisles  are  outlined  against  the  sky  Hke 
the  useless  skeleton  of  a  bird.  In  other  days 
they  met  uneven  rows  of  houses,  peering 
from  their  huge  roofs  like  timid  women  from 
their  mantles,  and  massing  themselves  against 
the  Cathedral  as  though  imploring  protection; 
and  her  arches  folded  them  into  her  shelter 
like  the  hen  which  spreads  her  wings  with  all 
her  force  to  gather  in  her  brood. 

One  church  in  Paris  still  keeps  this  adorable 
air  of  maternal  protection.  It  is  St.  Severine, 
quite  near  Notre  Dame,  standing  in  a  poor 
quarter  where  the  homeless  find  lodging  at 
one  sou  the  night.  This  example  still  living, 
if  I  may  use  the  expression,  makes  me  feel 
quite  sure  that  this  maternal  aspect  was  an  es- 
sential characteristic  of  these  old  churches, 
and  fortifies  me  against  the  arguments  of  cer- 
tain modern  architects,  positive  individuals, 
who  have  tried  to  prove  to  me  that  scientific 
reasons  dominated  over  ethical  in  Gothic 
architecture.  Flying  buttresses,  they  say, 
were  imagined  at  a  period  of  Gothic  art  when 
the  nave  had  become  so  high  in  proportion  to 
the  delicacy  of  the  columns  within  that  it  was 
necessary  to  support  it  from  the  outside.  But, 
surely,  this  reason  is  only  secondary.  If  the 
great  geniuses  who  built  the  churches  of  the 
Middle  Ages  had  not  been  sufficiently  compe- 
tent to  be  able  to  put  feeling  above  a  pure 


264  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

problem  of  resistance  they  could  never  have 
made  such  a  symbol  of  Christianity  as  you 
find  in  Notre  Dame  if  you  study  her  under- 
standingly. 

As  for  the  spoiling  of  her  Parvis,  I  cannot 
imagine  what  could  be  said  in  justification  of 
it.  I  am  not  sufficiently  the  enemy  of  the 
architects  of  to-day  to  believe  it  was  any 
of  them  who  counseled  the  municipality  of 
Paris  to  change  the  entire  effect  of  this  beau- 
tiful church  by  replacing  with  an  empty  space 
what  was  once  a  tangled  labyrinth  of  old 
houses. 

The  Cathedral  is  still  no  doubt  a  marvel  of 
harmony  through  her  lines,  of  majesty  through 
her  form,  of  lightness  through  her  details;  but, 
nevertheless,  the  feeling  that  you  have  in  look- 
ing at  her  fagade  from  the  end  of  a  great  Place 
must  be  of  a  much  lower  order,  I  am  sure, 
from  that  when  you  saw  it  at  a  distance  of 
only  a  few  yards.  Then,  as  you  picked  your 
way  through  the  narrow  streets,  you  came 
suddenly  upon  her  portals,  set  with  those 
figures  with  grave  and  touching  faces,  which 
the  high  relief  made  seem  living  in  the  stone. 
If  you  raised  your  eyes  slightly  you  saw  the 
ogivals  receding  in  ascensions  of  saints  and 
seraphim^  while  higher  still  were  other  fig- 
ures, and  then  columns,  and  open-work  balus- 
trades, and  then  an  immense  flowering  of  gar- 
goyles and  chimeras,  congealed  in  the  white 


One   of   the   Gargoyles   on   Notre    Dame. 


Entrance  to    Notre  Dame. 


NOTRE   DAME.  265 

stone  and  mounting  indefinitely  to  lose  them- 
selves in  the  pale  ether  of  the  heavens.  Then 
you  bowed  your  head,  crushed  by  the  terrible 
majesty  of  this  temple,  seen  thus  from  below, 
and  a  great  humility  came  into  your  soul. 
Close  at  hand  the  pitying  Christ  stretched  out 
His  hands  in  the  midst  of  His  cortege  of  Apos- 
tles; and  you  entered  the  church  to  pray. 

So  it  must  have  been  in  the  Middle  Ages,  I 
feel  as  sure  as  though  I  had  known  the  men 
and  women  of  Paris  of  that  day.  The  very 
principle  upon  which  the  Cathedral  is  built 
confirms  this;  the  way  in  which  the  figures  fill 
the  entrance  only  to  the  top  of  the  portals, 
and  then  all  the  means  employed  above  to 
make  the  lines  taper  more  and  more,  so  as  to 
give  that  efifect  of  extreme  height  without 
heaviness  which  was  sought  for  in  everything 
built  at  that  time,  and  can  be  felt  with  intensity 
only  upon  the  threshold.  Anyone  who  has 
been  at  Rouen,  at  Cologne,  or  who  has  simply 
raised  his  eyes  just  as  he  entered  Notre  Dame, 
will  understand  what  I  mean. 

I  know,  unfortunately,  all  the  uselessness  of 
protesting  against  a  vandalism  which  is  more 
the  work  of  circumstances  than  of  men.  You 
could  not  remake  a  primitive  Paris  to  serve  as 
a  casket  for  this  most  precious  of  churches. 
And  even  if  some  royal  caprice  should  one 
day  attempt  it,  where  would  be  the  eyes  to 
see  anything  but  a  chef-d'oeuvre  of  art  inwhat, 


266  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

in  the  centuries  of  simple  faith,  was  only  the 
most  worthy  house  which  could  be  conceived 
of  for  God? 

She  sits  on  her  island,  this  beautiful  old 
church,  in  the  splendor  of  her  robe  of  wrought 
stone,  dominating  the  years  that  pass,  the 
men  that  change,  the  life  in  such  miraculous 
process  of  transformation  by  science.  And  the 
city  grows  immeasurably,  and  buildings  suc- 
ceed to  buildings  all  the  length  of  her  flanks, 
leaving  before  her  gray  mass  the  calm  of  her 
Place;  as  the  river  which  divides  noisily  at 
the  pier  of  a  bridge  leaves  a  httle  spot  sleep- 
ing and  protected  on  the  other  side,  and 
then  noisily  rejoins  its  current.  She,  with  one 
or  two  other  churches,  are  all  that  is  left  in 
Paris  of  her  time,  as  though  to  remind  men 
that,  with  all  their  discoveries,  they  have  not 
been  able  to  advance  by  a  single  line  that  last 
step  she  marks  in  the  history  of  the  human 
mind — Christianity ! 


The  Commerce  of  Art  in  Paris. 

From  time  immemorial  people  who  have  had 
money  and  taste,  or  who  have  wanted  to  give 
themselves  the  luxury  of  appearing  to  have 
either,  have  bought  works  of  art.  But  specu- 
lation in  works  of  art  is  something  entirely 
modern,  dating  from  about  1872.  It  is  al- 
most unnecessary  to  say  that  it  had  its  birth 
in  Paris,  when  we  remember  that  Paris  is  one 
of  the  greatest  markets  in  Europe  for  the  sale 
of  objects  of  art,  and  the  greatest  market  in  the 
world  for  the  sale  of  paintings. 

This  is  because  of  its  Salon,  or,  rather,  its 
Salons,  since  now  there  are  two  which  have  a 
unique  reputation  on  account  of  the  number 
of  artists  who  expose  in  them  and  the  very  re- 
markable quality  of  their  work.  Salons  are 
a  necessity;  for,  in  order  to  produce,  an 
artist  must  feel  that  his  work  is  going  to  be 
seen  and  bought.  They  are  also  a  stimulus. 
The  French  Salons  have  existed  for  two  hun- 
dred years;  but  speculation  in  pictures  is 
something  which  came  with  the  downfall  of 
the  Empire,  and  the  establishment  of  the  Re- 
public. 

This  is  one  of  the  most  curious  consequences 
267 


268  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

of  the  substitution  of  the  RepubUcan  for  tht 
Imperial  regime  in  France.  As  soon  as  peo- 
ple began  to  have  leisure  to  think  about  some- 
thing else  besides  war  and  the  Commune, 
everybody  who  up  to  that  time  had  been  in 
opposition  to  the  Government  and  in  disfavor 
with  the  Emperor,  was  suddenly  raised  to  the 
highest  pinnacle  of  popularity.  The  official 
painters  were  thrown  into  discredit,  and,  nat- 
urally, others  who  had  been  systematically 
left  in  the  background  were  proclaimed  the 
only  masters.  Among  these  last  were  men 
who  fifteen  or  twenty  years  before  were  re- 
fused at  the  Salon,  like  Rousseau,  Millet, 
Ribot,  Puvis  de  Chavannes.  Courbet,  and 
others;  like  Manet,  whom  the  Emperor  in 
person  had  laughed  at,  and  had  even  de- 
clared shocking.  The  result  was  that  almost 
from  one  day  to  another  pictures  which  had 
been  scarcely  worth  a  few  hundred  francs 
found  buyers  at  high  prices.  Business  men 
could  not  fail  to  see  in  this  an  excellent  op- 
portunity, and  thus  it  was  that  great  houses 
came  to  be  created  in  Paris  for  the  sale  of 
pictures,  such  as  those  of  Goupil,  now  Bous- 
sod-Valadon,  Sedelmayer,  Durand-Ruel, 
Bernheim,  Detrimont.  They  soon  had  branch 
houses  in  other  countries,  and  also  rivals,  and 
the  business  of  art  became  one  of  immense 
importance.  Speculation  in  art,  in  the  begin- 
ning  prudently   confined   to   painters   of   the 


THE   COMMERCE   OF  ART  IN  PARIS.     269 

school  of  1830  to  1840,  soon  extended  to  the 
old  masters,  and  finally  to  new  men  coming 
up,  in  whom  dealers  or  even  simple  capitalists 
looking  for  good  investments,  thought  they 
saw  coming  celebrities. 

The  rise  of  this  new  commerce,  from  a 
general  point  of  view,  had  many  advantages. 
It  interested  people  in  a  large  number  of  art- 
ists who  up  to  then  had  been  ignored  or  for- 
gotten; and  it  sharpened  the  critical  sense  of 
the  public,  so  that  it  no  longer  considered  the 
annual  Salon  as  a  sort  of  great  picture-book, 
got  up  simply  for  its  amusement.  The  Salons 
had  then,  as  they  have  still,  the  great  disad- 
vantage of  often  giving  to  artists  without  real 
talent  a  momentary  and  fictitious  value,  ad- 
mirably adapted  for  speculative  purposes, 
while  they  ignored  other  men  destined  to  take 
an  important  place  in  the  evolution  of  art. 
Nevertheless,  the  birth  of  the  commerce  of 
art  in  Paris  had  a  happy  effect  on  art  in  gen- 
eral, through  stimulating  production,  and 
leading  artists  through  the  prospect  of  for- 
tune as  well  as  fame,  to  develop  to  the  highest 
degree  their  talent  in  as  many  different  lines 
as  possible. 

The  immediate  consequence  of  all  this  was 
that  the  Paris  Salon,  which  had  had  a  world- 
wide fame  for  more  than  two  centuries,  became 
not  only  the  most  important  exhibition  of  art 
of  each  year,  but  the  most  important  market 


270  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

for  the  sale  of  works  of  art.  In  1881  the 
State,  upon  whom  up  to  that  time  the  Salon 
had  depended,  recognized  this  psychologi- 
cal change  which  had  come  over  it,  and  of 
its  own  accord  gave  over  its  organization  to 
its  members,  who  formed  themselves  into  a 
society  called  the  "Societe  des  Artistes  Fran- 
<;ais."  Up  to  that  time  the  State  in  protecting 
the  Salon  had  done  an  extremely  disinterested 
work,  and  one  which  cost  it  a  great  deal  of 
money,  but  it  nevertheless  considered  this  in- 
dispensable in  order  to  keep  up  the  prestige 
of  French  art.  The  day  that  this  same  Salon 
became  a  paying  institution,  self-supporting, 
the  State  considered  that  it  had  played  its 
role  of  Macaenas  as  long  as  was  necessary, 
and  allowed  the  Salon  to  become  a  private 
enterprise.  Through  a  sort  of  conscientious 
scruple,  however,  the  Chambers  decided  that 
every  three  years  there  should  be  an  Expo- 
sition, organized  by  the  State,  which  should 
contain  all  the  best  Salon  exhibits  of  the  three 
preceding  years.  This  was  held  only  once,  in 
1883,  and  since  then  the  law  has  never  been  ap- 
plied. The  Societe  des  Artistes  Franqais  ob- 
jected that  the  official  Exposition,  following 
immediately  after  their  own,  was  too  formida- 
ble a  rival. 

The  conscientious  scruples  of  the  Govern- 
ment, however,  were  not  without  foundation. 
The  Salon  was  then    composed     of     all     the 


THE  COMMERCE   OF  ART  IN   P.ARIS.     271 

French  artists  and  a  great  many  from  other 
countries,  organized  into  a  society  with  almost 
the  sole  aim  of  holding  a  great  annual  ex- 
position for  selling  their  works.  There  were 
constantly,  as  was  inevitable,  all  sorts  of  dif- 
ferences and  rivalries  among  its  members,  and 
these  were  always  to  the  detriment  of  these 
artists — a  minority,  but  fortunately  a  minority 
of  importance — whose  sole  aim  was  art.  At 
the  end  of  1889,  under  the  pretext  that  the 
jury  of  the  Exposition  had  depreciated  the 
value  of  the  medals  they  awarded  in  giving 
too  many  to  foreign  artists,  a  considerable 
group  of  painters  and  sculptors  separated 
from  the  Societe  des  Artistes  Frangais,  with 
Meissonier  at  their  head,  and  created  a  new 
Salon  called  La  Societe  Nationale  des  Beaux 
Arts.  The  two  are  popularly  known  as  the 
Salon  of  the  Champs  Elysees  and  the  Salon 
of  the  Champ  de  Mars,  from  the  places  where, 
up  to  the  time  of  the  Exposition  of  1900,  they 
held  their  exhibitions. 

They  are  now  rival  business  houses,  of 
which  the  first  is  the  larger  and  the  richer 
of  the  two,  and  the  only  one,  moreover,  which 
contains  in  its  bosom  the  members  of  the  In- 
stitute. The  second  is  made  up  of  artists  who 
are  in  general  more  original  than  those  of  the 
first;  and  it  is  directed  by  men  who  are  quick 
to  carry  out  all  the  improvements  or  reforms 
demanded  by  the  public.     But  by  all  ordinary 


272  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

business  methods  both  try  to  attract  custom. 
Does  the  "Champ  de  Mars"  proclaim  that  it 
counts  more  creators  (Rodin,  Besnard,  Puvis 
de  Chavennes,  Carriere,  etc.)?  the  "Champs 
Elysees"  repHes  that  it  alone  is  in  the  real  tra- 
dition of  what  is  beautiful  in  art,  since  it 
has  all  the  masters  of  the  Institute  and  the 
Beaux  Arts  (Bouguereau,  Gerome,  Benjamin- 
Constant,  Henner,  Breton,  etc.).  The  first 
opens  a  salle  de  rcpos  with  beautiful  hangings, 
easy-chairs  and  a  buffet,  and  the  other  fol- 
lows its  example.  One  walks  in  the  foot- 
steps of  the  other  even  in  the  organization  of 
a  special  section  for  works  of  art.  The  com- 
mercial element  has  so  gained  ground  of  late 
in  the  Champ  de  Mars  that  it  is  not  at  all 
unlikely  that  before  very  long  there  will  be  a 
third  schism,  with  a  third  Salon. 

All  these  divisions  and  rivalries  are  a  source 
of  annoyance  to  the  Government,  whose  duty 
it  is  to  be  impartial,  and  yet  who  cannot  be 
because  its  preferences  go  naturally  to  the 
majority,  and  to  the  "Old  Guard"  of  the 
Champs  Elysees.  The  jury  for  the  Exposi- 
tion of  1900  was  made  up,  by  the  Minister 
of  the  Beaux  Arts,  of  four  elements:  one- 
fourth  from  the  Champ  de  Mars  (Societe 
Nationale),  one-fourth  from  the  Champs  Ely- 
sees  (Societe  des  Artistes  Fran(;ais),  one-fourth 
from  the  members  of  the  Institute,  one- 
fourth  from  the  functionaries  and  art  critics. 


THE   COMMERCE   OF  ART   IN   PARIS.      273 

The  majority,  you  see,  necessarily  came  from 
the  Champs  Elysees,  as  all  the  members  of  the 
Institute  belong  to  that  society. 

All  this  history  is  essential  in  order  to  un- 
derstand the  development  of  the  commerce  of 
art  in  Paris,  and  its  condition  at  the  present 
time.  Outside  of  a  very  few  isolated  painters, 
of  whom  I  shall  speak  later,  an  artist,  in  order 
to  sell  in  France,  must  be  admitted  to  one  or 
the  other  of  these  Salons  and  be  exposed  there 
in  a  good  place.  The  Champs  Elysees  admits 
the  most  works,  but  it  hangs  them  anywhere 
from  the  "line"  to  the  ceiling,  and  it  awards 
medals  which  place  their  receivers  hors  con- 
cours — which  means  that  their  pictures  are  ac- 
cepted without  being  passed  upon  by  the  jury. 
The  "hors  concours"  take  all  the  best  places 
in  the  Salon,  and  nearly  all  the  places  on  the 
line.  To  get  the  other  good  places  young 
painters  must  have  the  protection  and  the  in- 
fluence of  a  member  of  the  jury;  and  to  have  a 
medal  they  must  be  pupils  either  of  him  or  of 
some  other  of  the  heads  of  the  society.  It  is 
easy  to  see  the  result  that  this  has  upon 
art.  To  be  accepted  at  the  Salon  is  the  young 
painter's  principal  stepping-stone  towards  sell- 
ing his  pictures.  To  get  a  medal  is  to  be  hors 
concours,  and  that  means  the  certainty  of  ex- 
posing every  year  in  a  good  place,  and,  there- 
fore, of  always  having  his  works  in  the  mar- 
ket,  advantageously.      So.   lie  goes   into   the 


274  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

studio  of  some  one  of  the  heads  of  the  Champs 
Elysees  (not  all  of  whom  have  real  value  as 
artists),  and  more  often  than  not  sets  himself 
to  imitating  as  far  as  possible  his  master's 
manner;  naturally  the  style  his  teacher  most 
admires.  This  explains  the  immense  prestige 
of  the  Julian  School,  where  all  the  professors 
are  heads  of  the  Champs  Elysees,  and  it  also 
explains  the  generally  uninteresting  character 
of  the  Champs  Elysees  Salon.  The  excep- 
tional artist  will  also  go  to  the  Julian  School; 
but  the  average  in  every  school  is  mediocrity, 
and  nearly  every  Julian  student  of  good  and 
regular  standing  on  principle  is  passed  in  his 
examinations;  that  is  to  say,  is  admitted  to 
the  Salon.  So  we  see  a  great  many  mediocre 
artists  in  the  Champs  Elysee  Salon,  and  an 
artificial  and  temporary  value  is  given  them 
in  numberless  cases  simply  because  they  are 
in  the  Salon.  The  painters,  then,  too,  stand 
by  each  other.     Alediocrity  makes  the  law. 

In  the  Champ  de  Mars  the  hors  concours  has 
the  title  of  associe  or  socictaire.  Each  one  of  the 
societaires  has  the  right  to  expose  ten  works 
without  examination  by  a  jury;  each  of  the  as- 
socies  the  right  to  one  under  the  same  condi- 
tions, and  the  last  generally  have  three  or  four 
taken  outside  of  these.  Only  some  two  hun- 
dred places  are  left  for  newcomers,  and  those 
not  the  best.  The  Champ  de  Mars  also  is 
already  beginning  to  be  affected  by  the  same 


THE   COMMERCE   OF  ART  IN  PARIS.     275 

commercial  elements  which  have  influenced 
the  Champs  Elysees.  So  we  see  that  the 
two  Salons  which  put  the  hall-mark  on  art. 
and  established  criterions  of  art,  are  formed 
not  upon  artistic,  but  upon  business  princi- 
ples. For  all  sorts  of  reasons  men  are  often 
pushed  forward  who  have  only  a  fictitious 
artistic  value,  and  others  are  protected  who 
have  almost  no  artistic  value  at  all.  Foreign- 
ers then  get  with  difficulty  a  correct  idea  of 
the  actual  state  of  French  art,  of  the  real  posi- 
tion of  the  different  French  artists,  and  the 
actual  money  value  of  their  works?  Tolstoi,  in 
a  work  on  the  beaux-arts,  tells  how  falsely  his 
opinions  of  art  in  France  were  formed  from 
reading  the  art  criticisms  in  the  French  news- 
papers— nearly  all  pure  advertisements — and 
a  visit  to  one  exhibition  of  French  pictures,  or- 
ganized by  a  picture  dealer  of  Moscow. 

We  in  America,  outside  of  those  of  us  who 
are  able  to  see  the  Salons  every  year,  are 
even,  worse  off  than  the  Russians;  for  while 
we  read  fewer  French  critics,  distance  makes 
us  more  dependent  upon  the  dealers,  who  now 
furnish  our  public  almost  its  only  opportunity 
of  seeing  foreign  pictures,  and  who,  being 
business  men  naturally,  select  everything  with 
a  single  eye  to  business.  All  picture-selling 
now  has  come  to  be  as  much  organized  specu- 
lation as  any  other  sort  of  operations  in  stock. 
What   is   the   point  of  view  of  the   picture- 


276  PARIS   AS    IT   IS. 

dealer?  That  of  every  other  business  man, 
whose  aim  is  to  sell  very  dear  what  he  has 
bought  dear,  and  dear  what  he  has  bought 
cheap. 

In  the  first  instance,  when  the  dealer  wants 
to  sell  for  an  enormous  price  what  cost  him  a 
great  deal,  what  he  imports  and  what  he  puts 
in  fashion  are  the  pictures  of  some  painter 
a  la  mode,  in  whose  works  he  has  made  a 
"corner"  by  buying  up  all  of  them.  When 
the  man  is  dead  the  operation  is  excellent. 
A  great  deal  of  speculation  of  this  sort  has 
been  done  in  the  ancient  masters.  One  house 
that  I  call  to  mind  has  been  operating  espe- 
cially in  Rembrandts,  but  the  supply  is  ex- 
hausted, and  it  is  putting  the  other  Dutch 
masters  in  fashion.  A  great  deal  has  been 
done  with  the  1830  painters,  like  Rousseau, 
Dupre  and  Corot.  This  source  also  is  pretty 
well  exhausted  (though  a  large  number  of 
false  Corots  have  been  put  in).  I  have  no- 
ticed lately,  however,  that  a  particular  dealer 
was  preparing  a  future  "corner"  in  Corots 
by  buying  up  all  that  are  left,  of  which  but 
few  are  the  best.  In  these  cases  the  market 
is  generally  "bulled"  for  them  all,  good  or  bad. 
The  painters  of  the  end  of  the  Empire,  such 
as  Millet  and  Bouguereau,  have  been  forced 
up  to  fabulous  prices.  Bouguereau  has  de- 
clined greatly. 

In  the  second  sort  of  operation  what  the 


THE   COMMERCE   OF  ART  IN  PARIS.     277 

dealer  brings  over  and  exploits  are  the  pic- 
tures of  some  painter  that  he  has  put  arti- 
ficially a  la  mode  or  of  one  to  whose  works  he 
has  given  an  artificial  value  by  forcing  them 
up  to  an  exaggerated  price  at  some  celebrated 
sale.  Putting  an  artist  artificially  in  fashion  is 
especially  practiced  with  portrait  painters. 
The  dealer  chooses^  an  artist  who  has  made 
himself  a  little  talked  of  in  Paris,  through  be- 
ing a  prix  dc  Rome,  or  having  made  the  por- 
trait of  a  king  or  pope,  or  of  Sarah  Bern- 
hardt, which  has  been  a  sensational  feature  of 
the  Champs  Elysees  Salon,  who  has  been  writ- 
ten about,  which  is  an  equivalent  to  a  good 
advertisement  in  the  American  papers,  and 
signs  with  him  a  contract  to  go  to  the  United 
States  and  make  so  many  portraits  at  so  much 
a  head.  I  know  of  some  cases  of  portrait 
painters  where  the  dealer  got  half  the  price.  It 
generally  happens  that  either  these  artists  are 
men  who  have  no  reputation  in  the  artistic 
world  abroad,  like  Chartran,  or  they  are  men 
who  have  a  great  reputation,  like  Benjamin- 
Constant,  but  for  certain  ivorks.  In  the  case 
of  a  good  artist  like  Benjamin-Constant,  the 
people  in  Paris  who  are  jealous  for  the  repu- 
tation of  French  art  will  tell  you,  as  they  have 
told  me:  "He  can  make  a  fine  portrait  if  he 
tries.  But  you  must  not  judge  of  him  b\' 
those  he  paints  simply  to  make  money."  As 
it  is,  all  of  the  portraits  that  I  have  seen  lately 


278  PARIS   AS   IT  IS. 

by  Benjamin-Constant  have  been  painted  sim- 
ply to  make  money.  A  constant  habit  of 
working  rapidly  has  made  him  almost  in- 
variably replace  painting  by  clever  effects  of 
finish,  dissimulate  in  shadow  the  hands  which 
it  takes  too  long  to  draw  carefully,  and  to 
make  conventional  backgrounds  such  as  you 
see  in  photographs. 

A  great  portrait,  for  that  matter,  like  any 
great  work  of  art,  can  only  come  from  the 
impulse  of  inspiration;  and  no  one  can  have 
two  or  three  inspirations  a  month  in  the 
midst  of  all  the  distractions  of  travel,  and 
before  the  faces  of  personages  entirely  un- 
known, of  whose  personality  and  character 
he  has  no  idea.  Rembrandt  would  never  have 
done  that  sort  of  thing.  He  preferred  to  keep 
on  copying  himself. 

As  to  picture  sales  and  the  fictitious  value 
given  by  them  to  pictures,  I  have  seen  many 
amusing  examples.  For  instance,  I  remem- 
ber going  some  three  years  ago  to  a  little  ex- 
hibition at  the  Hotel  Drouot  of  the  works 
of  Jongkind,  who  had  recently  died.  A  very 
good  small-sized  Jongkind  could  then  be 
bought  for  about  $60,  as  there  was  but 
little  sale  for  his  pictures.  The  entire  collec- 
tion was  bought  in  by  the  representative  of  a 
syndicate  of  picture-dealers  made  up  of  the 
leading  houses  in  five  cities,  including  New 
York  and  Boston.     The  syndicate  then  pro- 


THE   COMMERCE   OF  ART   IN  PARIS.     279 

ceeded  to  put  the  Jongkinds  on  the  market 
in  this  way:  At  the  first  great  sale  one  was 
put  in  and  the  price  run  up  by  the  syndicate 
to  a  certain  point.  When  it  had  gone  consid- 
erably above  the  original  value  of  the  work, 
bidding  stopped,  and  the  picture  was  knocked 
down  to  the  dealers,  who  divided  the  loss. 
This  operation  was  repeated  at  successive 
sales,  until  finally  an  outsider  stepped  in  and 
bought  a  Jongkind  for  something  like  $600. 
The  syndicate  then  divided  the  profit,  and  as 
it  owned  all  the  painter's  works,  could  make 
an  extremely  good  thing  out  of  them.  The 
dealers  did  the  same  thing  lately  for  the  im- 
pressionist, Sisley,  who  lived  and  died  in  pov- 
erty. They  had  bought  up  a  monopoly  of 
his  works,  and  upon  his  death  they  organ- 
ized a  sale  for  the  benefit  of  his  children, 
and  asked  his  colleagues  of  the  Champ  de 
Mars  each  to  contribute  a  picture.  Most  of 
them  did,  to  find  that  the  sale  was  intended 
simply  as  a  means  for  exploiting  the  Sisleys 
and  depreciating  the  other  painters,  who  were 
sold  for  prices  that  were  absurd.  The  pub- 
lished prices  of  these  sales  largely  set  the 
prices  for  pictures.  In  this  way  dealers  suc- 
ceed in  depreciating  the  reputation  of  the  men 
they  do  not  own,  and  making  the  painters 
more  and  more  dependent  on  them. 

For  various  reasons  speculators  had  a  last 
gold  mine  in  the  impressionist  painters.  Cer- 


zSo  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

tain  dealers,  believing  in  the  future  of  these 
chercheit7-s,  bought  up  a  large  number  of  their 
pictures  at  a  time  when  they  were  poor  and 
unknown;  or  they  got  artists  to  make  engage- 
ments with  them  on  long  contracts  to  give 
them  a  monopoly  of  their  work  (Monet  and 
Degas),  or  they  depreciated  their  work  while 
they  were  living  to  buy  it  up  in  a  lot  after 
their  death  (Sisley).  They  were  mistaken  in 
their  idea  that  impressionist  painting  was 
going  to  replace  every  other;  but  neverthe- 
less, as  it  is  an  important  contribution  to  the 
evolution  of  art,  the  impressionist  pictures 
they  have  in  their  galleries  have  a  real  value, 
especially  those  painted  between  1885  and 
1887.  They  do  not  all,  however,  possess  the 
value  attributed  to  them..  The  last  Monets 
and  the  last  Sisleys  have  been  very  inferior. 
Monet  and  Degas  live  apart,  outside  of  the 
movement  of  art  and  the  world,  and  are  little 
influenced  by  commercial  considerations.  But 
few  men  can  keep  up  to  their  best  standard 
when  their  work  is,  as  it  were,  mortgaged 
beforehand. 

Most  of  these  resources  for  making  great 
sums  rapidly  are  beginning  to  be  exhausted, 
and  therefore  the  latest  source  for  speculators 
is  selling  imitation  old  masters.  A  droll  cari- 
cature of  Forain's  some  time  ago  in  one  of 
the  French  newspapers  was  a  hit  at  this.  A 
painter,  in  a  room  representing  the  last  de- 


THE   COMMERCE   OF  ART   IN   PARIS.     281 

gree  of  destitution,  tiie  wife  ill,  the  children 
ragged  and  emaciated,  is  working  feverishly 
at  an  easel.  A  dealer  in  a  fur-lined  coat  stands 
by,  saying:  "You  know  I  must  have  three 
Corots,  two  Ribots  and  a  Diaz  before  the 
15th."  Just  at  present  imitation  Dutch  mas- 
ters are  specially  put  on  the  market;  Dutch 
masters  are  particularly  fashionable.  I  know 
of  a  young  American  painter  outside  of  Paris 
who  is  making  an  excellent  living,  after  much 
struggling,  out  of  works  of  art  of  this  de- 
scription. 

One  resource  still  remains,  and  long  will 
remain  to  the  speculator.  That  is,  to  organ- 
ize little  exhibitions  of  pictures  of  some  out- 
side men  and  attract  public  attention  to  them. 
Sometimes  these  are  good,  oftener  poor,  for 
with  the  eclecticism  existing  everywhere  now 
in  r^rance,  most  of  the  good  men  expose  in 
the  Salon.  Another,  very  commonly  prac- 
tised, is  to  lie  in  wait  for  the  new  men  in  the 
Salons  who  are  beginning  to  be  appreciated 
by  the  public,  and  persuade  them,  through  the 
prospect  of  a  regular  income  for  their  fami- 
lies, to  article  themselves  out,  as  it  were,  to 
the  dealer,  and  furnish  him  all  their  works,  at 
so  much  a  head,  for  a  fixed  term  of  years. 
This  is  perfectly  legitimate,  but  the  dealer, 
having  a  monopoly  of  this  painter's  pictures, 
runs  them  up  to  an  artificial  value,  after  put- 
ting them  in  fashion. 


282  PARIS   AS   IT   IS. 

I  have  been  amused  to  see  the  degree  to 
which  fashion  ruled  artistic  taste.  I  saw  an 
instance  of  it  not  long  ago  with  the  Norwe- 
gian painter,  Thaulow.  Thaulow  was  then 
living  in  Dieppe,  and  I  was  visiting  ITis  fam- 
ily. As  he  was  away  from  Paris  and  the  art 
movement,  he  had  arranged  to  give  his  pic- 
tures on  contract  to  a  dealer  for  a  term  of 
years — now  nearly  ended.  Thaulow  had  then 
a  European  reputation,  and  his  studio  was  full 
of  lovely  things.  A  Thaulow  was  then  worth 
about  $400,  and  it  was  certainly  the  time  to 
buy,  before  prices  went  up.  I  spoke  of  this 
to  several  American  friends  interested  in  pic- 
ture buying,  but  it  fell  upon  the  most  stony 
indifference.  Thaulow  was  not  in  fashion. 
One  of  these  same  persons  bought  later  of  a 
dealer  in  New  York  one  of  these  Thaulows, 
which  in  a  very  short  time  had  been  pushed 
up  to  $900.  I  take  this  instance  because  a 
Thaulow  is  really  worth  $900,  but  suppose  it 
were  not?  The  operation  might  be  the  same. 
This  sort  of  thing,  too,  reacts  with  foreigners 
upon  other  painters  whose  works  rise  slowly 
simply  through  their  permanent  and  real  artis- 
tic value. 

Nevertheless,  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that 
the  dealer  takes  great  risks  like  the  publisher; 
and  on  the  whole,  as  I  said  in  the  beginning, 
the  rise  of  the  commerce  of  art  has  been  a 
great  gain  to  art,  as  the  rise  of  an  exchange 


THE  COMMERCE   OE  .ART   IN  PARIS.     283 

for  the  manipulating  of  stocks  has  been  a 
great  gain  to  our  country  in  stimulating  the 
creating  of  railroads,  and  the  developing  of 
new  territory.  The  difference  between  the 
two,  however,  is  that  one  is  frankly  recog- 
nized as  a  business,  conducted  on  purely 
business  principles;  the  other  is  not.  The 
picture-dealer,  a  business  man,  whose  art  in- 
stincts, if  he  has  any,  are  necessarily  stifled 
by  his  commercial  instincts,  is  allowed  to 
create  the  popular  taste  for  art,  and  then  to 
exploit  it  as  he  wills.  His  judgments  on  not 
only  modern  but  ancient  pictures  are  taken 
by  a  great  majority  of  the  picture-buying 
public  as  authorities. 

For  Europe,  America  is  now  the  great  art- 
market  of  the  world;  and  it  is  the  great  field 
for  art  speculation  because  distance  and  a 
lack  of  understanding  of  the  conditions  on 
the  other  side  make  us  less  able  to  judge  of 
the  real  value  of  the  foreign  art  products 
which  are  brought  to  us,  since  we  have  no 
means  of  forming  our  own  judgments  upon 
them  through  a  broad  standard  of  compari- 
son. 

Other  countries  have  passed  through  this. 
They  now  protect  themselves  against  it,  as 
in  Russia,  by  organizing  exhibitions  entirely 
outside  of  the  dealers.  In  Russia  the  royal 
family  replaces  the  State,  and  gives  to  art 
the  protection  that  the  Government  gave  to 


284  PARIS   AS    IT    IS. 

France  in  the  early  days.  The  last  exhibition 
was  under  the  direct  patronage  of  the  Em- 
peror's aunt,  the  Grand  Duchess  of  Olden- 
burgh.  The  French  Government  sent  the 
director  of  the  Beaux  Arts,  M.  Ronjon,  to 
this,  and  the  Grand  Duchess  invited  M.  An- 
dre Saglis,  one  of  the  young  attaches  of  the 
Beaux  Arts,  who  has  showed  the  most  initia- 
tive in  propagating  a  knowledge  of  the  best 
French  art  abroad,  to  come  on  at  her  expense 
and  give  practical  suggestions  for  this  ex- 
hibition. We  do  not  want  a  royal  family,  and 
our  Government  could  never  play  the  role 
that  the  State  did  in  France,  where  the  coun- 
try and  the  constitution  and  the  arts  have 
developed  simultaneously  during  several 
hundred  years.  Our  wealthy  and  public- 
spirited  citizens  are  beginning  to  replace  both 
these.  But  could  not  we  also  have  exhibi- 
tions of  pictures  organized  outside  of  com- 
mercial conditions? 


Index. 


Academic,  the,  Frangaise,  pp.  14-34;  women  continue  tra- 
ditions 01,  p.  1$;  foundation  of,  p.  16;  social  aspect  of, 
pp.  17-25;  of  no  real  use,  p.  32. 

Academic  des  Inscriptions,  et  Belles  Lettres,   p.  30. 

Academic  des  Sciences,  p.  30. 

"Administration,"  the  goddess  of  France,  p.  17^;  everything 
in  France  regulated  by,  p.  175;  why  it  survives,  p.  177. 

Ambassadeurs,   the   restaurant,    p.    121. 

Anglais,  the  cafe,   pp.    116,   119. 

Armor,  collections  of,  at  Musee  d'Artillcrie,  p.  212. 

Art,  the  commierce  of,  in  Paris,  pp.  267-284. 

Art,  the,  of  Paris,  compared  to  contemporary  literature,  p.  84. 

Arts,   Pont  des,   p.  4. 

Ueaux  Arts,  Academic  des,  pp.  32-34;  influence  of  harmful 
to   Paris,   p.   32. 

Besnard,   M.,   pp.  241-244. 

Bohemia   at   home,  p.   tj. 

Bon  Marche,  the,  founded  by  Boucicaut,  p.  130;  described, 
p.    132;  a  custom   introduced   by,   p.    133. 

Bourgeoisie,  the,  typical  life  of  France,  p.  58. 

Bourget,    M.    Paul,   pp.  92-94. 

Carnavalet,  Musee,  p.  211. 

Cazin,    M.,    pp.   241-243. 

Ceramics,  Chinese,  collection  of,  at  Louvre,  p.  208. 

Ceard,   M.   Henry,   mention  of,   pp.   89,   90. 

Cernuski,  the  Musee,  p.  208;   Oriental  art  of,   p.  212. 

Champs  Elysees,  salon  of  the,  p.  271 ;  members  of  Institute 
identified  with,  p.  271;  Jean  Paul  Laurens,  president  of, 
p.  246. 

Champ  de  Mars,  salon  of,  p.  271;  Monet  identified  with, 
P-  234- 

Chavanncs,   Puvis   dc,   pp.   229,   230. 

Claretie,  M.  Jules,  director  of  Comedie   Frangaise,   p.   35. 

City,  Isle  of  the,  pp.  4,  73. 

Cluny,  the  Museum  of,  pp.  191-204;  little  chapel  of,  p.  194; 
"chambre  de  la  Reign  Blanche,"  at,  p.  197;  treasures  of, 
pp.  198;  199;  salle  devoted  to  objects  pertaining  to  Jew- 
ish  religion,   p.   209. 

Comedie,  the,   Frangaise,  pp.  35-54;  styled  House  of  Moliere, 

fi.  37;  actual  government  of,  p.  ^i ;  storerooms  of,  p.  43; 
eading  actors  of,  pp.  48-51;  Louis  XIV.  actual  founder 
of,  p.  38;  to  it  Pans  owes  much,  p.  40;  publi,:  expen- 
diture for,  a  national  benefit,  p.  41 ;  why  holds  its  own, 
p.    48. 

285 


286  INDEX. 

Concorde,   Place  de  la,  p.  9.  ' 

Coppee,   M.   Francois,   p.   99. 

Corot,  "father  of  French  impressionists,"  p.  233. 

Cottel,   M.,  pp.  235,   236. 

Degas,  M.,  p.  245. 

Dauchez,  M.  Andre,  p.  241. 

Deputies,    the    Chamber   of,    pp.    141-157;    called    a    "Congress 

of  Ambassadors,"  p.   149;   its  members,  p.    153;  function- 
aries of,  numerous,   p.    183. 
Donnay,  M.  Maurice,  p.  98. 
Doree,  the  Maison,   p.    116. 
Durand,   the   restaurant,   p.    120. 
Duval,  the  restaurants,   p.    119. 
Elysee,   the,    pp.    158-172;    an   anomaly,   p.    i6i ;    description   of, 

p.  162;  viewed  from  Faubourg  St.  Honore,  p.   163;  inside 

life  of,  pp.   164,   165;   effacement  of  ladies  at,   p.   168;   ball 

at,   pp.    170,    171. 
Fetes  of  Paris,  pp.  10,  11. 
Foyot,   the   restaurant,   p.    121. 
France,   M.   Anatole,   p.    103. 
France,  too  long  ruled  by  kings,  p.   161. 
Frederic,   the  cafe,  pp.    122,    123. 
French,  the,  tendencies  of,  p.   68. 
Goncourt,  the  Academy,  pp.   91,  92. 
Grand,   the   Cafe,  p.    112. 
Guimet,  the  JMusee,   p.  206. 
Gyp,   Mme.   de  Martel-Janville,   pp.  96,  97. 
"Haute   bourgeoisie,"    home   life    of,    in    Paris,    described,    pp. 

60-63. 
ITervieu,   M.   Paul,  p.  90. 

Home,  the  French,  characteristics  of,  pp.  55.  56,  65-67. 
Huysmans,  M.  Joris  Carl,  pp.  90,   105. 
Impressionists,   the   French,   pp.  233-246. 
Institute,     members    of    identified     with     the     Salon     Champs 

Elysees,  p.  271. 
Invalides,   Les,  pp.  214-218;   Napoleon's  remains   deposited   in, 

p.   215;    Museum   of   Artillery   in,   217. 
Joseph,  the  restaurant,  p.    122. 
Laurens.   Jean    Paul,    pp.    231-246;    president    of    Salon    Champ 

de   Mars,   p.  247. 
Lavedan,   M.    Henri,   p.   97. 

Legislation,  an  epitome  of  French,   pp.    146-148. 
Lepage,  M.   Bastien,   p.  232. 
Letters,   the   men  of,   pp.   83-108. 
Lilas,   la   Closerie  des,   p.   79. 

Literary,   the,   situation   in   Paris,   reviewed,   pp.   85-108. 
Lorrain,    M.    Claude,    pp.   232-234. 
Louvre,   the,    pp.    250-260;    some    pictures    noted,    pp.    253-256; 

gallery  of  sculpture,  p.  257;  Egyptian  rooms  of,  p.  258. 


IXDKX.  2S7 

Louvre,    the,    a    great    shop    of    I'aris,    p.    131;    founded    by 

Chauchard,  p.  130. 
Luxembourg,    Museum    of,    p.    209;    indispensable    sequel    to 

Louvre,  p.  211. 
Madrid  and  Arme-Nouville,  tlie  restaurant,  p.   121. 
Mardi-Gras,   Molicre  afternoons  of,   p.  36. 
Marguery,   the   restaurant,   p.    121. 
Masters,   the  old   Dutch,   p.   233. 
Maupassant,  ^L  Guy  de,  p.  89. 
Medan,  soirees,  de,  p.  88. 

Menard,  M.  Rene,  p.  237;  member  of  Barbizon  school,  p.  238. 
Ministries,   in   the,   pp.    173-188. 
Mode,   the,   in   Paris,   pp.   219-228;   Napoleon   paid   tribute   to, 

p.  223;  sociological  evolution  of,  p.  225;  theatres  of  Paris, 

a  salon  for,  p.  226. 
Monet,    M.,   pp.   233,   234. 
Moreau,  the  Musee  Gustave,  p.  208. 
Morissot,   Berthe,  p.  233. 
Musee  d'Artillerie,   p.   212. 
Musee   des    Gobelins,    p.    212. 
Museums  of  Paris,  pp.  205-213. 
Musee  de  la  X'ille  de  Paris,  p.  211. 
Naturalist   movement,   the,   pp.   87-90. 
Noel  and  Peters,  the  restaurant,  p.  121. 
Notre   Dame,   Cathedral   of,   pp.   261-266. 
Oppert,   stories  of,   p.   29. 

Oriental  Art,  at  the  Louvre,  at  Musee  Cernuski,  p.  212. 
Paillard,  the  cafe,  p.  121. 
Palissy,  potteries  of,  at  Cluny,  p.   202. 
Paris,   natural   beauty   of,   pp.   3-6;    secret   charm   of,   pp.   8,   9; 

why  different  from  other  cities,  p.  7;  traditions  of,  p.  11; 

first  theatre  of,  p.   37;  other  theatres  of.   p.  49;   Cafe  de, 

p.    in;  great   shops  of,   pp.    128-137. 
Passy,   Pont  de,   p.   4. 

Phares  de  la  Bastille,  a  great  shop  of  Paris,   p.    131. 
Place  Clichy,  a  great  shop  of  Paris,  p.  131. 
Poetry,   French   symbolic,  p.    104. 
Politics,   French,  discussed,  pp.   154-157. 
Potteries,  at  Musee  des  Religions,  at  Cluny,  p.  212. 
President  of  France,  the,  representative  of  the  people,  p.   159: 

never  popular,   p.    160;   daily  life  of,   p.    167. 
Prevost,    M.    Marcel,   pp.   94,   95- 
Public  Instruction,  visit  to  Ministry  of,  p.   186. 
Public  opinion,  not  intelligent  in   France,   p.   184. 
Prix  de   Rome,  p.  33. 
Quarter,    tlie    Latin,   discussed,    pp.    72-82;    changes    in,    p.    75; 

stories  of,  pp.  81,  82. 
Rodin,    M.,    pp.    249.    250. 


288 


INDEX. 


Religions,  Musee  des,  p.  206. 

Renaissance,  department  art  of,  at   Louvre,   p.   209. 

Restaurants,  the  famous,  of  Paris,   pp.    109-127;   some  famous 

dinners  at,  p.  125. 
Rosny,  J.-H.,   the   brothers,   p.    107. 
Rostand,   M.,    Edmond,   p.    105. 
Sacre   Cceur,   church   of,   p.   5. 
Salon  of  the  Champs   Elysees,  p.  271. 
Salon  of  the  Champ  de  Mars,  p.  271. 
Salons   of   Paris,    formed   upon    business   rather   than   artistic 

principles,   p.   275;    criticism   upon   management   of,   pp. 

269-274. 
Samaritaine,   the,   a  great   shop  of   Paris,   p.    131. 
Shops,    the    great,    of    Paris,    discussed,    pp.    128-138;    ethical 

influence  of,   p.    137. 
Simon,  M.,  artist  of  Barbizon  school,  pp.  239,  240. 
Societe  des   Artistes   Fran^aise   organized    1881,   p.   270;   groun 

of  sculptors  and  painters   separated   from,   p.   271. 
Soldat   Laboreur,   a  great   shop  of   Paris,   p.    131. 
Sous-prefet,  problem  of  the,  pp.   145,   146. 
Speculation    in    art,    in    Paris,    p.    268;    confined    at    first    to 

school  of  1830-40,  p.  269;  influence  of  on  Salons,  p.  269; 

criticism   of   methods  of   conducting   exhibitions,   p.   273. 
St.   Severine,   church   of,   p.   263. 
Studios,   the,   of   Paris,   pp.   229-249. 
Tapestries  at  Mmsee  des  Gobelins,  p.  212. 
Tapis   Rouge,  the,  a  great  shop  of  Paris,  p.   131. 
"The   Friday   Dinner,"   p.    126. 
Tour  d'Argent,  the,   p.   124. 
Tournelle,  Pont  de  la,  p.  4. 
Tout-Paris,    defined,    p.    56. 
Twelfth    Night,   celebrated   in    Paris,   p.   11. 
Versailles,  art  treasures  of,   p.  211. 
Voisin,  the  Cafe,  p.   116. 
Zola,  M.  Emile,  p.  87. 


AA    000  922  057    5 


